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HOW  THEY  LIVED  IN  HAMPTON: 


APPLIED   IN   THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  WOOLLENS. 


BY 


EDWARD   EVERETT  HALE,  D.D., 

Author  of  "  Back  to  Back,"  "  WoRKiNGMteN's  Homes,"  "In  His 

Name,"  "Ten  Times  One  is  Ten,"  "The  Man 

WITHOUT  A  Country,"  Etc.,  Etc. 


oJOic 


BOSTON: 

J.  STILMAN  SMITH  &  CO., 

O^ce  of  "Lend  a  Hand" 

3  Hamilton  Place. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1888,  by 

J.  STILMAN   SMITH   &  COMPANY, 
in  the  office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress  at  Washington. 


Typography  by  J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co. 


PREFACE 


The  author  supposes  that  this  Essay  on  the 
Christian  relations  of  the  capitalist  and  the 
workman  will  be  more  generally  read  if  it  is 
presented  in  narrative  form. 

It  is  proper  to  say  that  the  details  bearing 
on  the  business  of  manufacture  have  the  au- 
thority of  a  well-known  and  successful  manu- 
facturer of  woollens. 

I  am  myself  the  person  who  was  invited, 
in  1873,  by  the  proprietors  of  three  different 
woollen  mills,  to  take  them  and  carry  them 
on  on  the  plan  proposed.  I  received  these  in- 
vitations because  I  had  blocked  out  this  plan, 
or  rather  a  manufacturer  of  large  experience 
had  blocked  it  out  for  me,  in  a  story  which  I 
published  at  that  time  in  Harper's  Magazine, 
called  "Back  to  Back." 


IV  PREFACE, 

Unfortunately  for  me,  I  was  not  trained  to 
the  woollen  manufacture,  and  could  not  take, 
therefore,  the  difficult  part  which  Mr.  Spinner 
takes  in  this  book,  as  Max  Rising  took  it  in 
that.  I  was  therefore  obliged  to  decline  the 
three  proposals.  But  in  this  book,  as  the 
reader  will  see,  I  have  supposed  that  Mr. 
Spinner  accepted  one. 

EDWARD    E.    HALE. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.   How  THEY  Lived  at  Hampton      ....        i 

n.   The  Plan 24 

HI.   The  Results 32 

IV.   The  Store 58 

-V,   The  Enterpriser 90 

VI.   Children's  Work 108) 

VII.   The  School 125) 

VIII.   Hours  of  Work 142 

IX.   The  Church (155) 

"~"~X.   The  Public  Library 175 

XI.  Entertainment 183  ^ 

XII.   Temperance (293^ 

XIII.  The  Savings  Bank 211 

XIV.  Work  and  Labor ^32  j 

XV.   Communism 250 

XVI.  Conclusion &o^ 


HOW  THEY  LIVED  IN  HAMPTON. 

CHAPTER    I. 

HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON. 

HAMPTON  was  a  little  factory  town  where 
was  one  woollen  mill,  which  represented 
an  investment  of  perhaps  sixty  thousand  dol- 
lars. The  village  was  pretty,  —  a  little  more 
four-square  and  set  in  its  plan  than  I  should 
have  made  it, — but  with  evident  arrangements 
of  comfort  for  the  workingmen  and  working- 
women.  Lines  of  maples,  about  twenty  years 
old,  or  rather  less,  shaded  the  streets,  growing 
perhaps  a  little  too  near  the  fronts  of  the 
houses.  The  houses  were  not  in  blocks. 
They  were  separate  from  each  other,  and  each 
house  had  the  command,  if  I  may  so  speak,  of 
as  much  as  an  acre  of  land,  as  a  home  garden. 
I  noticed,  as  I  walked  about  the  village  and 
pushed  my  explorations  into  the  back  streets, 
that,  in  many  instances,  the  lots  connected  with 
back  lots,  so  that  these  gardens  were  consider- 


2  HOW    TUKV    LIVED    IN    IIAMl'TON. 

ably  more  than  an  acre.  The  mill  was  just  off 
the  village  street,  built  close  to  the  Beaver 
Brook,  which  was  dammed  up  to  make  the 
waterfall  which  provided  power.  A  church,  a 
town  hall,  and  a  schoolhouse  faced  three  sides 
of  a  little  public  square,  which  was  planted  with 
trees  and  flowers,  in  the  midst  of  which  there 
was  a  fountain.  I  noticed  a  stand  for  a  band 
on  one  side  of  the  square. 

I  had  been  following  Beaver  Brook,  and  what 
the  geography  would  call  its  tributaries,  far  up 
into  the  woods  and  hills,  and  had  returned  to  a 
late  dinner,  with  a  basket  of  trout  quite  as 
heavy  as  I  cared  to  carry.  The  plan  had  been 
that  we  were  to  drive  down  the  valley  after  din- 
ner, and  see  what  was  to  be  seen  of  a  certain 
mound  in  the  fork  of  the  river  and  brook,  which 
either  was  or  was  not  built  by  the  Aztecs,  or  by 
Chippewas,  or  some  other  Indian  tribes,  and  re- 
garding which  we  were  to  form  an  opinion 
while  we  spent  a  pleasant  afternoon.  But  the 
appearance  in  the  west  of  black  clouds,  which 
made  a  thunder  storm  certain,  broke  up  these 
plans  for  a  drive,  and  so  I  found  myself  sitting 
with  Mr.  Spinner,  my  host,  on  the  broad  east- 
ern piazza,  with  the  chance  for  a  long  talk, 
which  business,  amusement,  or  the  interruption 
of  guests  had  not  permitted  during  my  visit. 

"Now   you   can   tell   me,"  said   I,   "how  you 


HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  3 

came  here,  what  you  did  first,  and  what  you  did 
last,  why  you  did  it,  and  where  you  did  it,  when 
you  failed,  and  when  you  succeeded.  " 

Spinner  laughed.  "  I  am  not  a  story-teller," 
said  he,  "  and  I  shall  be  apt  to  put  the  cart  be- 
fore the  horse.  The  story  will  fail  in  what  the 
magazines  call  artistic  or  sesthetic  grouping  or 
arrangement.  But  if  you  put  me  on  my  hobby, 
I  shall  ride  him,  and  you  will  have  to  see  his 
paces." 

I  said  I  wanted  nothing  better. 

"I  like  to  tell  the  story,"  he  said.  "I  have 
seen  it  all,  —  I  and  Nancy  here,  —  and  we  have 
been  a  good  deal  of  it.  But  we  should  not 
have  done  what  we  have,  nor  would  you  see 
what  you  see  here,  but  for  the  loyal  help  of 
the  people  here  ;  no,  nor  if,  on  the  whole,  the 
country  had  not  been  behind  us.  At  bottom, 
John,  this  is  a  country  of  workingmen.  The 
wealth  in  the  hands  of  a  few  rich  men  is  easily 
seen  and  easily  talked  of.  But,  for  all  that, 
the  amount  in  the  pockets  of  the  People  —  the 
People  with  a  large  P,  as  that  man  said  in  his 
speech  —  is  vastly  more  than  the  amount  at 
the  bank  accounts  of  a  few  nabobs.  Indeed,  I 
often  think  of  that  phrase  of  Quincy's,  that  the 
servant-girls  of  Boston  owned  the  palaces  on 
their  Back  Bay.  He  meant  that  the  servant- 
girls  made  the  deposits  in  the  savings   banks, 


4  HOW    THKY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

which  enabled  them  to  lend  to  the  palace-build- 
ers all  the  money  they  wanted. 

"So  the  country  sympathizes  with  industry, 
with  contrivance,  with  work.  That  sympathy 
shows  itself  in  law,  —  well  in  fashion,  though 
the  newspapers  do  not  think  so,  —  in  public 
sentiment.  And  this  makes,  oh,  Freeman,  it 
makes  no  end  of  difference.  I  would  not  run 
a  mill  in  Mexico,  —  not  if  you  would  giv^e  me 
forty-five  ingots  of  silver  to  build  into  the  foun- 
dation. Nay ;  when  I  remember  how  I  heard 
a  Manchester  woman  from  England  once,  in  a 
New  Hampshire  valley,  hold  up  her  hands  to 
heaven  and  invoke  its  '  curse  on  them  that  built 
the  chimbleys  which  shut  out  God's  light,'  from 
her  old  home,  in  the  England  she  had  deserted ; 
w^hen  I  heard  that,  I  was  glad  I  was  not  making 
cloth  in  England.  I  like  to  work  where  I  have 
'the  country  behind  me.'  " 

Then  Spinner  asked  me  if  I  remembered 
where  we  had  heard  that  phrase.  I  did  remem- 
ber it  very  well.  Captain  Greely  had  given  an 
account,  intensely  exciting,  of  his  Arctic  ad- 
ventures. And  he  told  us  how  he  encouraged 
the  men  by  telling  them  that  they  had  "  the 
country  behind  them." 

"Well,"  said  Spinner,  as  he  picked  up  the 
thread  of  his  history,  and  as  little  Mary  Spinner 
brought  me  a  Bartlett   pear  and  a  fruit-knife, 


HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  5 

"  to  begin  at  the  beginning,  we  began  when 
everything  was  horribly  depressed.  I  suppose 
that  is  a  good  time  to  begin.  If  the  sand  and 
gravel  has  been  swept  off  the  rock,  you  have  a 
clean  underpinning.  You  can  build  on  the  rock, 
and  no  mistake,  and  for  that  there  is  good  Scrip- 
ture. It  was  in  the  autumn  of  1874.  I  had  been 
the  foreman  in  the  dyeing-room  —  head-dyer  I 
was  called  —  in  the  Andalusia  Mills,  at  Groton. 
Perhaps  you  remember  how  high  up  they  went," 
he  said,  rather  grimly,  "  higher  than  a  kite. 
The  selling  agent  knew  as  much  about  wool  as 
I  know  about  quaternions.  He  chose  to  buy 
our  wool,  as  well  as  to  sell  our  goods.  He  left 
the  business  mostly  to  his  sons,  who  knew  more 
of  billiards  than  I  know  of  teazles.  And  the 
upshot  of  it  all  was  that  there  was  that  first- 
rate  smash-up.  Stockholders  and  all  were  mad. 
Andalusia  Mills  were  sold  under  the  hammer  to 
some  Germans,  and  they  brought  in  their  own 
people  to  run  them,  if  and  when  they  opened 
again.  So  I  and  Nancy  here,  with  our  two 
babies,  were  left  out  in  the  cold. 

"  Meanwhile  the  country  was  drugged  or 
flooded,  or  whatever  you  call  it,  with  every 
sort  of  woollen  goods.  And  it  did  seem  as  if 
the  man  was  a  fool  who  made  any  more. 

"Just  at  that  time  I  met  at  some  sort  of 
a  committee  meeting  our  old  friend  Thankful 


6  HOW    THEV    LIVED    IX    HAMPTON. 

Noursc  ;  we  were  both  trustees  of  a  working- 
man's  building  fund.  I  walked  home  with 
Nourse,  and,  well,  yes,  I  told  him  a  few  bottom 
truths  on  the  subject  of  investment.  He  had 
been  in  the  Andalusia,  and  now  had  the  pleas- 
ure of  seeing  the  same  stock  quoted  at  '35,  no 
buyers,'  for  which  his  father  had  given  two  or 
three  hundred  a  share. 

"I  told  Nourse  that  it  was  just  what  the 
Scripture  said.  He  had  had  his  good  things, 
and  now  he  had  his  evil  things.  I  told  him 
that  if  he  had  known  how  to  manufacture 
Avoollens,  and  had  chosen  to  use  his  knowl- 
edge, he  would  have  saved  much  of  his  invest- 
ment. 

" '  Instead  of  which,'  I  said,  'you  chose  to  go 
to  the  Islands  of  Greece,  and  up  the  Nile,  and 
across  the  desert  to  Damascus,  and  you  left 
the  business  of  manufacturing  to  some  people 
who  knew  nothing  about  it.'  Nourse  answered, 
rather  grimly  and  gloomily,  that  he  knew  that 
very  well,  quite  as  well  as  I  did,  and  that  he  did 
not  come  to  have  his  memory  refreshed. 

"'No,'  I  said,  'I  did  not  mean  to  annoy  you. 
But  I  meant  to  say  this,  that  there  are  two  dif- 
ferent rates  by  which  capital  ought  to  be  paid. 
One  is  the  rate  by  which  I  am  paid  for  my 
money  when  I  do  not  take  care  of  it,  and  take 
no  risks.     This  is  a  much  lower  rate  than  the 


HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  7 

rate  to  be  paid  me  when  I  take  care  of  it  my- 
self, and  when  I  do  take  some  risk.' 

"  *  Of  course,'  Nourse  says  ;  '  every  one  agrees 
to  that.' 

"  Yes,  every  one  agrees  to  that.  But  I  have 
not  found  that  all  people  agree  to  what  follows. 
Yet  I  think  it  is  clear.  It  is  not  very  hard,  in 
any  country,  to  find  out  about  what  capital  is 
worth  (say)  for  idiots  or  fools  of  any  sort,  or  for 
people  who  do  not  want  to  take  care  of  their 
money,  if  they  knew  how.  It  is  clear  enough 
that  the  long  government  loans,  such  loans  as 
the  English  consols,  represent  the  minimum 
rate  of  interest.  An  idiot  or  his  guardian 
would  be  sure  of  his  interest.  He  takes  no 
care  of  the  investment,  but  his  investment  is 
sure.  And  I  went  on  to  say  that  while  Nourse 
was  going  up  the  Nile,  or  was  crossing  the  des- 
ert, or  even  if  he  had  a  paralytic  stroke  which 
lasted  seventeen  years,  the  Andalusia  people 
ought  to  have  paid  him  at  that  rate  of  interest, 
and  that  he  had,  indeed,  in  equity,  an  absolute 
right  to  it. 

"Nourse  began  to  see  what  I  was  driving  at ; 
and  he  said  that  if  that  were  all  capitalists 
were  to  have,  nobody  would  ever  bother  to  use 
money  for  manufacturing.  They  would  try  gov- 
ernment bonds  and  be  done  with  it.  'And  you 
fellows,'  said  he,  '  who  are  now  very  willing  to 


8  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

take  our  subscriptions  to  your  stock,  would  find 
there  was  no  money  to  build  the  mills  with,  or 
to  buy  the  first  bale  of  wool.' 

"  I  said  I  knew  that ;  and  that  I  did  not  mean 
to  limit  them  to  that.  But  I  said,  that  for  what 
followed  this  minimum  rate,  they  became,  to  a 
certain  extent,  adventurers.  What  followed  was 
something  like  a  second-mortgage  bond,  —  not 
so  sure  in  its  essence  as  the  first.  '  You  are 
entitled,'  I  said,  'to  what  we  will  call  the  Idiot 
Rate,  —  the  average  rate  of  "  Governments," 
—  though  the  sky  should  fall,  in  bad  times  or 
good  times.  But  for  after  profit,  you  must  take 
the  chances,  just  as  the  retailer  does,  who  sells 
you  satinets  and  broadcloths,  —  or  just  as  the 
tailor  does,  who  has  pieces  of  them  on  his 
shelves,  and  cannot  sell  them.  When  the  An- 
dalusia people  paid  you  that  swamping  dividend 
of  eleven  per  cent,  six  or  eight  years  ago,  three 
per  cent  or  a  little  more  came  to  you  because 
it  was  the  worth  of  the  money,  and  nearly 
eight  per  cent  came  to  you  because  that  was 
a  good  year,  and  because  then  you  had  some 
intelligent  people  at  the  fore.' 

"Nourse  growled  that  it  was  long  since  he 
had  had  any  such  good  fortune,  —  that  he  was 
a  fool  not  to  sell  out  then,  and  that  he  never,  he 
hoped,  should  be  such  a  fool  again. 

"  But  I  went  to  see  him,  the  next  day,  and  we 


HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  9 

followed  up  the  conversation.  I  told  him,  that 
even  in  the  depressed  condition  of  affairs  which 
we  were  in,  there  were  as  good  chances  as  ever 
for  going  into  the  business  of  making  woollen 
cloths.  I  said  that  I  did  not  believe  that  wear- 
ing warm  clothes  in  winter  was  going  out  of 
fashion. 

"  Nourse  said  that  the  tariff  might  change, 
and  England  and  Germany  might  undersell  us. 
He  had  burned  his  fingers  once,  and  he  would 
not  burn  them  again,  — and  so  on  and  so  on. 

"  As  for  tariffs,  I  said  that  the  country  would 
long  want  a  large  revenue,  and  was  used  to 
gathering  it  by  import  duties.  I  said  that  the 
country  was  really  governed  by  its  workingmen, 
and  that  they  would  be  slow  to  injure  them- 
selves. And  I  said  that  whether  there  was  a 
high  tariff  or  not,  we  are  an  ingenious  people, 
and  a  numerous  people ;  that  the  nearer  the 
mill  was  to  the  shop  on  the  one  side,  and  to 
the  man  who  made  the  coat  on  the  other,  the 
better  was  the  chance  of  the  man  who  carried 
on  the  mill.  Any  way,  I  said,  I  had  been  edu- 
cated to  make  woollen  cloth,  that  was  my  pro- 
fession, and  I  did  not  expect  to  give  it  up  ;  that 
there  were  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Americans 
as  good  as  I,  who  had  been  trained  to  that  pro- 
fession, and  that  we  had  somewhere  between 
forty   and   fifty  million    people   about    us    who 


lO  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

were  glad  to  wear  the  cloth  we  had  made.  He 
laughed  good-naturedly,  and  said  he  was  glad  I 
was  in  such  good  heart.  And  I  reminded  him, 
that  however  much  he  had  suffered  by  the  An- 
dalusia, I  had  suffered  more. 

"But,  indeed,  those  were  black  times  in  our 
business.  O  !  I  cannot  tell  you  how  many  mills 
shut  down,  —  all  the  weak  ones,  —  most  of  the 
little  ones,  —  and  indeed  a  good  many  which  no 
one  would  ever  have  called  weak  until  then.  It 
happened  that  I  wrote  an  article  about  manu- 
facturing, in  a  weekly  paper,  which  attracted  the 
attention  of  some  business  men,  and  from  that 
article  it  was  that  I  received,  through  the  edi- 
tor's hands,  three  letters,  from  three  different 
sets  of  people,  asking  me  if  I  did  not  want  to 
bring  to  life  three  different  broken-winded  wool- 
len mills,  in  three  different  parts  of  the  country. 
One  of  them  was  in  Ohio ;  one  of  them  was  in 
Middlesex,  in  Massachusetts ;  and  the  third  was 
a  mill  here  in  Hampton.  I  do  not  say  it  was 
this  mill,  though  here  is  the  old  sluice-way,  the 
old  wheel  in  fact,  and  in  part  the  old  founda- 
tion. But,  really,  we  have  changed  almost  every- 
thing, and  the  village,  as  you  see  it,  is  practi- 
cally new. 

"  If  I  do  not  tire  you,  or  bore  you,  I  will  tell 
you  how  it  came  about." 

I  said  it  would  not  bore  me  at  all  ;  that,  in 


HOW    THEV    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  I  I 

fact,  I  had  come  to  Hampton  to  find  out,  if  I 
could,  the  secret  of  their  success,  and  that  the 
more  he  Hked  to  tell  me,  the  better  I  should  be 
pleased.     So  Spinner  began  again. 

"I  do  not  pretend  that  I  should  have  launched 
out  into  this,  if  the  Andalusia  had  held  on.  I 
had  a  good  salary  there,  and  it  was  very  con- 
venient and  very  pleasant  to  draw  ray  pay  with 
the  rest,  to  salt  down  what  I  wanted,  and  to  let 
a  strong  company  behind  me  take  all  the  risks 
of  the  business.  I  have  never  wondered  that 
men  are  so  eager  to  go  into  positions  where 
they  have  fixed  pay,  regularly  paid.  But  the 
Andalusia  had  not  held  on.  It  had  been  blown 
up  'higher  than  a  kite.'  I  had  Nancy  and  the 
babies  in  a  world  which  was  full  of  Thankful 
Nourses  ;  I  mean,  full  of  men  who  were  afraid 
of  manf uacturing,  —  that  is,  were  afraid  of  the 
very  enterprises  on  which  my  bread  and  butter 
and  my  babies'  milk  and  spoons  depended.  That 
was  really  the  reason  why,  when  the  third  of 
these  mills  was  offered  me,  I  began  to  ask  my- 
self whether  I  had  not  better  face  the  music  ;  in 
fact,  whether  I  must  not  face  the  music.  The 
Ohio  letter  I  had  answered  right  away,  with  a 
civil  refusal.  But  the  Middlesex  letter  and  this 
Hampton  letter  came  together,  by  one  mail. 
That  interested  me,  and  made  me  think  some- 
thing  might   be   done,    and    I    sent   for   John 


12  HOW    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON, 

Workman,  and  asked  him  to  come  and  see 
me. 

"  No.  He  is  not  one  of  the  Worcester  Work- 
mans.  That  is  another  family.  His  father  came 
from  Maine,  and  afterwards  went  to  Wisconsin. 

"  I  sent  for  John  Workman,  and  he  came  to 
me.  He  was  out  of  work,  as  I  knew  he  was,  and 
I  knew  that  he  would  know  some  of  the  best 
hands  we  had  had  at  the  Andalusia.  The  de- 
pression of  all  business  was  as  hard  for  them  as 
it  was  for  the  manufacturers.  Well,  I  had  much 
the  same  talk  with  him  that  I  had  had  with  Mr. 
Nourse,  only  now  I  began,  so  to  speak,  at  the 
other  end.  But  I  told  Workman  that  he  and  I 
had  our  chance  now.  We  had  often  said  that 
the  rate  of  wages  ought  to  rise  with  good  times, 
if  it  was  to  fall  with  bad  times.  But  I  had  three 
mills  offered  to  me  to  carry  on,  and  thought  I 
was  not  without  hopes  that  I  could  persuade 
Nourse  to  give  some  sinews  of  war.  So  I  said 
to  Workman  that  if  he  could  get  a  lot  of  men 
together  who  were  willing  to  work  at  minimum 
wages,  but  to  be  so  far  partners  in  the  concern 
that  if  times  improved  their  wages  should  im- 
prove, we  had  our  chance.  I  told  him  that  the 
'  bloated  capitalists '  were,  for  once,  as  badly  off 
as  the  men  who  worked  with  their  brains  and 
with  their  hands,  and  that  for  once  we  had  a 
chance  to  begin  in  our  own  way. 


HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  1 3 

"  Now,  as  I  said  before,  in  ordinary  times,  and 
especially  in  prosperous  times,  this  would  have 
been  mere  talk,  and  nothing  more.  But  Work- 
man had  nothing  to  do,  and  he  had  a  family  to 
feed.  He  knew  several  of  our  best  friends,  as 
I  have  said;  and  they  had  nothing  to  do,  and 
they  had  their  families  to  feed.  He  brought 
two  or  three  of  them  to  me,  and  we  had  long 
conversations.  It  ended  in  my  getting  more 
promises  from  them,  which  I  was  able  to  carry 
to  Mr.  Nourse.  They  were  willing  to  take  hold 
with  me ;  I  did  not  say  on  shares  exactly,  but 
really  it  was  much  the  same  way  that  the  fisher- 
men, or  in  old  days  the  whalers  at  Nantucket, 
go,  or  went,  for  their  enterprises.  That  is  to 
say,  everybody  there  was  to  be  sure  of  his  ra- 
tions as  far  as  anything  could  be  sure ;  but  for 
the  rest,  it  all  depended  upon  whether  our  voy- 
age were  a  good  one  or  not.  The  men  wanted 
to  divide  every  three  months,  but  I  would  not 
agree  to  this.  I  said  the  voyage  must  last  two 
years  before  there  was  a  division.  They  were 
rather  a  superior  class  of  men,  —  they  were  in- 
terested in  the  plan.  They  were  all  running 
behindhand,  and  drawing  on  their  bank  ac- 
counts ;  and  they  finally  agreed  that  our  voy- 
age should  be  a  two  years'  voyage  before  we 
made  any  dividend.  That  is  to  say,  they  agreed 
to  just  what  Nourse  agreed  to.     All  that  was 


14  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

to  be  absolutely  promised  was  a  'starvation  pay- 
ment,' and  the  rest  was  to  be  part  of  the  ven- 
ture. 

"  Let  me  say,  by  the  way,  that  in  any  such 
enterprise  you  are  able  to  rely  on  the  love  of 
adventure  which  exists  in  all  men's  hearts. 
Why,  Freeman,  if  you  thought  it  was  right, 
you  would  like  to  buy  a  lottery  ticket  yourself 
to-day,  and  you  are  really  sorry  that  you  know 
it  is  wrong. 

"  As  for  me,  I  was  between  the  two,  with 
Workman.  We  were  a  sort  of  buffers,  to  take 
all  the  pounding.  We  were  to  be  scolded  by 
both  sides,  and  have  all  the  responsibility  of 
everybody's  failures.  We  were  to  be  responsi- 
ble with  the  present  owners  of  the  mill,  which- 
ever way  we  should  take.  We  were  to  make 
the  engagement  with  Nourse,  and  the  engage- 
ments with  the  men.  When  we  were  fairly 
running,  if  ever  we  were  fairly  running,  I  was 
to  buy  the  wool,  and  I  was  to  sell  the  cloth.  I 
was  to  make  the  journeys  to  New  York,  and  I 
was  to  have  money  enough  in  the  strong-box 
every  Saturday  night  to  pay  the  starvation 
wages  we  had  agreed  upon,  and  at  the  end  of 
every  third  month  to  pay  Nourse  the  '  idiot 
dividend '  on  his  capital.  Workman  was  to 
take  the  personal  oversight  of  the  manufacture, 
to  turn  the  raw  wool  into  woollen.     That  is  to 


HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  1 5 

say,  we  were  to  be  these  hated  middle-men 
whom  we  had  abused  so  often,  and  whom  we 
had  heard  cursed  so  often.  I  did  not  much  like 
to  be  a  middle-man ;  but  it  was  very  clear  that 
Nourse  did  not  mean  to  run  this  mill,  but  was 
going  off  to  the  Sandwich  Islands.  And  the 
people  who  owned  it  did  not  mean  to  run  it. 
If  they  had  meant  to,  they  would  not  have  of- 
fered it  to  me. 

"  I  showed  the  men's  agreement  to  Nourse, 
and  I  got  a  half-way  promise  from  him  that,  if 
I  started  such  a  plan,  he  might  put  in  some 
money.  How  much  he  would  put  in,  I  did  not 
know.  But  on  the  strength  of  his  promise  I 
drew  fifty  dollars  out  of  my  bank  account,  and 
took  Workman  with  me,  and  we  came  down  to 
see  this  place.  I  can  tell  you  that  it  did  not 
look  much  as  it  does  now.  It  had  been  badly 
planned,  badly  managed,  and  had  come  to  grief. 
A  poor  broken-winded  mill  at  the  best ;  and 
when  we  saw  it,  it  had  no  wind  at  all.  The 
people  had  all  gone  away  except  an  old  man 
who  was  keeper,  and  who  had  his  machinery, 
such  as  it  was,  clean  and  in  good  order.  But 
it  would  evidently  take  a  good  deal  of  money, 
and  I  no  longer  wondered  that  the  people  had 
written  to  me  to  offer  it  to  me. 

"  If  you  care  anything  about  it,  I  will  show 
you  to-morrow  the  papers  that  passed  between 


l6  HOW    THI£V    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

mc  and  them,  and  I  sliould  like  to  show  you 
some  photographs  which  show  what  it  was 
when  we  took  hold. 

"  But,  to  make  a  long  story  short,  for  Nancy 
wants  us  at  tea,  it  ended  in  my  persuading 
Noursc  to  buy  the  whole  concern,  and  for  the 
present  to  hold  the  deed.  But  he  took  me  as 
partner,  and  John  Workman  as  another  partner; 
and  we  drew  out  our  bank  accounts,  —  I  had 
nearly  two  thousand  dollars  then,  and  Workman 
had  five  or  six  hundred,  —  so  that  we  might  be 
with  him  in  good  faith  partners  in  co-operation. 
And  it  was  agreed  that  any  man  who  worked  in 
the  mill  three  months  might  become  a  stock- 
holder with  us.  Indeed,  Nourse  agreed  to  sell 
out  all  his  stock  if  we  chose.  We  were  to  allow 
him  four  per  cent  a  year,  as  what  we  all  called 
in  joke  the  'idiot's  dividend,'  which  was  to  be 
paid  as  our  first  charge  after  we  had  paid  what 
we  called  '  starvation  wages  '  and  our  other  run- 
ning expenses. 

"  For  the  rest,  I  was  to  be  permitted,  for  my 
salary  as  manager,  to  draw  six  hundred  dollars 
a  year,  as  the  men  drew  their  wages.  Work- 
man was  to  draw  the  same.  After  the  end  of 
the  second  year  we  were  to  see  where  we  were. 
That  is  to  say,  the  first  voyage  should  then  be 
considered  over.  Profits,  for  we  took  it  for 
granted  there  would  be  profits,  were  then  to  be 


HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  1/ 

divided  into  three  equal  parts.  Nourse  was  to 
have  one-third  ;  Workman  and  I,  as  managers, 
were  to  have  one-third  ;  and  the  men  were  to 
have  one-third.  Of  course,  as  fast  as  they 
bought  out  Nourse's  stocli,  they  also  became 
capitalists,  and  took  their  earnings  as  such. 
The  scheme  would  work,  however,  if  none  of 
them  took  any  of  his  share. 

"  However,  you  had  better  see  all  this  on 
paper,  and  I  will  show  you  the  articles  of  agree- 
ment after  Nancy  has  given  you  a  cup  of  tea. 

"  When  the  papers  were  finally  passed  I  had 
Workman  with  me,  and  he  brought  with  him 
one  of  the  best  of  the  men  who  had  agreed  to 
try  the  new  plan  at  Hampton,  whose  name  was 
Holmes.  We  had  gone  all  over  the  business 
pretty  carefully,  and  I  thought  Mr.  Nourse 
wanted  to  get  away.  But  the  other  two  still 
lingered,  and  finally  Holmes  broke  the  silence, 
and  said  :  — 

"  *  I  wanted  to  say  to  you,  Mr.  Nourse,  and  I 
think  Mr.  Spinner  would  like  to  say  the  same 
thing,  that  we  are  not  going  into  this  thing  as 
a  mere  matter  of  business.  It  is  a  matter  of 
business,  and  we  will  hold  to  our  promise  as 
men  of  business.  But  we  like  the  plan  really, 
and  we  like  it  because  it  seems  to  us  to  be  fair 
all  round.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  bad  talk  — 
you  must  excuse  me  if  I  say  I  think  it  is  on  all 


l8  HOW    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

sides  —  about  the  relations  of  what  people  call 
labor  and  capital.  For  myself,  I  never  called 
myself  a  laborer ;  I  always  called  myself  a 
workman,  and  I  think  there  is  a  difference  be- 
tween work  and  labor.  But  that  is  neither 
here  nor  there.  I,  for  one,  do  not  want  to  en- 
courage hard  language  between  men  like  you, 
Mr.  Nourse,  who  have  money,  and  men  like  me, 
who  want  to  do  an  honest  day's  work,  who  ex- 
pect to  be  paid  for  it,  but  who  do  not  expect 
anything  more  than  our  pay.  I  should  think 
that,  if  you  will  let  me  say  so,  was  the  Chris- 
tian way  of  stating  this  thing,  and  though  I  do 
not  make  much  pretence  as  a  religious  man,  I 
am  a  member  of  the  church,  and  I  do  want  to 
go  forward  in  my  everyday  work,  as  I  do  in 
what  I  say  on  Sunday,  on  Christian  principles. 
Now,  if  you  do  not  think  I  am  talking  too  long, 
—  and  my  wife  often  tells  me  that  I  do  talk  too 
much,  —  I  should  like  to  explain  what  I  mean 
by  Christian  principle.' 

"  Mr.  Nourse  said,  with  a  great  deal  of  feel- 
ing, that  he  was  very  much  obliged  to  him  ; 
that  he  would  stay  all  night  to  hear  what  he 
had  to  say.  For  he  said  he  had  made  this 
thing  a  matter  of  prayer  himself,  and  he  wanted 
to  know,  if  he  could,  what  were  the  Christian 
relations  which  bound  him  to  the  men  at  work 
in  the  establishments  where  he  had  any  inter- 


HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  I9 

est.  He  said,  very  earnestly,  that  anybody  was 
unjust  to  him  who  said  he  merely  wanted  to 
screw  out  of  his  money  the  most  that  could  be 
got  for  it ;  that  he  had  read  and  talked  and 
studied,  in  hope  of  finding  out  what  these  same 
Christian  relations  were.  He  would  be  very 
much  obliged  to  Mr.  Holmes  if  he  would  take 
all  the  time  he  wanted  to  state  his  view  about 
it. 

"  Holmes  seemed  somewhat  encouraged  by 
this  declaration,  but  he  said,  with  a  half  laugh, 
that  we  should  not  want  to  stay  till  midnight. 
*  Indeed,  it  is  all  in  very  short  language  in  the 
New  Testament,  where  it  says  we  must  bear 
each  other's  burdens.  It  says  that  no  man  is 
to  live  for  himself  alone,  and  no  man  is  to  die 
for  himself  alone.  For  my  part,  I  do  not  think 
I  should  work  a  day  if  I  were  not  pleased  with 
the  thought  that  I  was  doing  my  share  to  clothe 
a  man  who  cannot  clothe  himself  as  well  as  I 
can  clothe  him,  —  some  poor  fellow  off  in  Da- 
kota or  catching  whales  in  the  Arctic  Seas, 
maybe,'  he  said,  laughing.  '  I  want  to  do  my 
share  in  the  work  of  this  world.  It  happens 
that  I  have  been  trained  to  do  this  as  a  weaver. 
I  call  myself  a  good  weaver,  and  I  think  I  am 
able  to  teach  other  people  something  about 
weaving.  If  I  did  not  think  so  I  should  go 
about  something  else  ;  I  would  not  come  with 


20  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

W'oikmaii  to  this  mill.  But  I  want  to  do  this 
as  a  disciple  of  Jesus  Christ  and  a  child  of  God. 
I  want  to  do  it  in  such  a  way  that  I  shall  not  be 
ashamed  of  doing  it  when  I  come  to  die. 

" '  Now,  Mr.  Nourse  and  Mr.  Spinner  both,' 
he  said,  '  this  plan  of  yours  is  somewhat  new  in 
the  way  in  which  you  have  set  it  up.  It  really 
implies,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  all  that  I  have  ever 
contended  for  when  I  have  made  speeches,  as  I 
have  often  done,  in  our  trade-union  meetings. 
If  you  will  let  me  say  so,  this  plan,  as  Mr. 
Spinner  has  drawn  it  up,  throws  our  business  of 
manufacturing  on  very  much  the  same  ground 
on  which  most  business  is  done  in  America. 
Men  are  used  to  such  a  union  as  I  make,  and 
as  Workman  makes,  with  Mr.  Spinner  and  any- 
body he  has  with  him  to  carry  on  this  mill. 
Men  know  perfectly  well  that  there  must  be  a 
director  or  manager ;  there  must  be  somebody 
to  make  plans  and  somebody  to  carry  out  plans  ; 
and  we  are  not  such  fools  as  to  suppose  that 
that  somebody  is  to  work  without  being  paid 
for  it.  I  am  not  such  a  fool  as  to  suppose  that 
he  will  know  how  to  do  his  work  without  learn- 
ing how.  We  are  not,  therefore,  jealous  at  all 
of  the  man  who  directs  our  industry,  who  man- 
ages the  concern,  who  says  what  is  profitable 
and  what  is  not  profitable,  and  who  buys  and 
sells  our  goods.     If  you  will  think  of  it,  that  is 


HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  21 

exactly  what  is  done  in  every  wholesale  store  or 
retail  shop.  There  is  a  man  who  buys  my  gro- 
ceries, for  instance ;  he  knows  where  to  buy 
them  and  how  to  buy  them  cheaply,  and,  al- 
though he  sells  them  to  me  for  half  as  much 
again  as  he  gave  for  them,  I  do  not  c^uarrel 
with  him.  It  is  a  convenience  for  me  to  buy  a 
pound  of  sugar  instead  of  buying  a  barrel  of 
sugar,  and  I  do  not  quarrel  with  the  man  who 
gives  me  that  convenience.  But,  behind  the 
grocer,  there  is  a  bank,  which  lends  him  money 
and  provides  him  with  the  capital  which  he  is 
going  to  use.  Now  here,  Mr.  Nourse,  I  am  not 
sure  that  you  would  agree  with  me,  but  I  am 
telling  you  the  average  opinion  of  American 
workmen  about  the  relationship  of  that  bank  to 
that  grocer.  They  say  that  the  bank  provides 
him  with  capital  at  certain  rates,  which  do  not 
vary  very  much  from  time  to  time.  There  was 
once  a  time  when  they  were  even  fixed  by  law 
at  six  per  cent,  or  thereabouts.  No  one  says 
that  was  wise,  and  I  suppose  it  was  not  wise. 
Still,  this  is  certain  :  those  rates  do  not  go  up 
and  down  in  exact  correspondence  with  the  ups 
and  downs  of  business.  When  my  grocer  has 
very  little  custom  he  does  not  find  that  the 
banks  lend  him  money  any  more  readily  be- 
cause he  wants  it  more.  In  fact,  he  does  not 
tell  the  bank  very  accurately  what  the  state  of 


22  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

his  business  is  ;  they  do  not  ask  him  very  care- 
fully. They  are  careful  to  know  if  his  credit  is 
good,  —  that  he  does  not  press  them  too  hard, 
—  and  if  he  is  safe  they  lend  him  money. 

"'I  say  that  is  the  relationship  in  which  people 
arc  in  the  habit  of  using  capital  in  America. 
That  is  exactly  the  relationship  which  you  have 
established  with  us  in  this  contract  you  have 
made.  Please  to  observe,  then,  that  it  is  the 
arrangement  which  we  are  used  to.  It  is  the 
arrangement  Vv'hich  we  see  succeeds  in  other 
forms  of  business.  That  is  the  reason  why  we 
like  it  better  than  an  arrangement  in  which,  if 
business  happened  to  be  very  prosperous,  if 
sales  were  very  quick,  and  our  goods  particu- 
larly in  demand,  the  capitalist  should  make  the 
usual  profit  on  that  account,  while  our  wages 
would  rise  but  slowly,  if  they  rose  at  all. 

" '  I  think  Mr.  Spinner  said  that  we  are  not 
above  liking  the  excitement  of  good  times,  and 
we  are  men  enough  to  take  the  pressure  of  bad 
times.  Here  is  the  reason  why  we  are  willing 
to  share  and  share. 

" '  Beyond  that,  I  should  like  to  assure  you, 
Mr.  Nourse,  who  seem  to  represent  capital  in 
this  conversation,  and  you,  Mr.  Spinner,  who 
seem  to  represent  skill  in  manufacturing  and  in 
trade,  —  I  should  like  to  assure  you  both  that 
we  shall  like  this  plan,  not  simply  because  we 


HOW    THEY    LIVED    AT    HAMPTON.  23 

think  we  are  going  to  have  more  money  in  our 
pockets  at  the  end  of  two  years,  but  because  it 
seems  to  us  exactly  fair.  It  seems  to  us  that 
now  we  bear  your  burdens,  and,  if  you  will  let 
me  say  so,  that  you  bear  ours.  When  I  go  to 
church,  I  am  apt  to  hear  a  good  deal  of  this 
talked  about.  And  I  find  that  I  am  very  apt  to 
get  thinking  that  this  is  the  practical  side  of  the 
Christian  religion  ;  and  if  we  can  only  succeed 
here  on  our  part,  and  you  on  your  part,  in  keep- 
ing this  in  mind,  why,  we  shall  be  working  out 
the  Christian  relations  of  capital  to  workmen. 
It  will  not  be  a  great  while,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
before  we  cease  talking  about  your  part  and  our 
part,  and  shall  feel  that  we  are  all  engaged  in 
one  concern.  This  I  can  assure  you  of,  —  that 
under  such  a  plan  as  this,  you  are  certain  to 
have  picked  workmen  and  workwomen.  I  do 
not  know  how  much  you  have  thought  of  it,  but 
it  is  a  great  thing  to  have  a  contented  set  of 
people.  It  is  not  a  bad  thing  to  have  a  set  of 
men  who  know  they  are  trying  an  experiment, 
and  I  can  promise  you  that  while  there  is  any 
hope  that  this  experiment  will  succeed,  the  work- 
men, whom  I  do  not  choose  to  call  laborers,  will 
meet  you  gentlemen  half  way,  as  you  have  met 
us.'" 

Such    were    Mr.    Holmes's    views    as    to   the 
"Christian  relations  between  capital  and  labor." 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE    PLAN. 

n^HE  arrangements  by  which  the  Hampton 
Mills  were  set  running  were,  indeed,  sub- 
stantially those  on  which  they  have  been  run 
from  that  day  to  this  day.  An  act  of  incorpora- 
tion was  taken  out,  on  the  principle  of  limited 
liability,  under  the  general  corporation  law  of 
that  state.  This  act  originated,  as  all  similar 
legislation  in  the  world  originated,  in  the  act 
framed  by  Mr.  Theodore  Hinsdale  in  Connecti- 
cut, in  the  year  1837.  It  was  an  act  and  he  a 
man  to  be  celebrated  and  honored  by  all  who 
believe  in  Christian  Co-operation,  and  think  that 
the  law  should  sustain  and  protect  all  who  v/ish 
to  bear  each  other's  burdens. 

I  will  not  print  the  act  of  incorporation  here ; 
for  I  shall  make  the  plan  more  intelligible  by 
copying  the  original  agreement,  as  it  was  drawn 
up  by  Nourse,  Spinner  and  Workman.  Event- 
ually, Spinner  and  Workman  printed  this  agree- 
ment, and  kept  copies  of  it  in  the  office,  to  give 
away  to  people  like  me,  who  came  to  see  the 
operation  of  the  mills. 


THE    PLAN.  25 

Hampton  Woollen  Mill. 

Thankful  Nourse  of  Arcadia,  John  Workman 
of  Hopedale,  and  WilHam  Spinner  of  Crastis 
agree  to  form  a  corporation  for  the  re-estabUsh- 
ment  of  the  Hampton  Woollen  Mills  in  the 
town  of  Hampton.  This  agreement  is  to  last 
for  five  years,  and  afterwards,  until  one  of  these 
three  parties  expresses  a  wish  to  withdraw,  when 
the  partnership  shall  be  dissolved,  and  the  cor- 
poration, at  the  end  of  one  year's  notice  given 
by  the  dissatisfied  partner. 

[In  fact,  neither  of  them  wished  to  withdraw 
at  the  end  of  five  years.  And  a  private  agree- 
ment by  which  they  were  bound  to  each  other 
to  consent  to  such  withdrawal  was,  at  the  end 
of  five  years,  cancelled  by  the  three.  Either  of 
them  now  has  the  right  to  sell  his  stock,  and  on 
the  death  of  either  of  the  managing  partners, 
the  surviving  shareholders  would  choose  his 
successor.] 

I.  Thankful  Nourse,  for  himself,  his  heirs 
and  representatives,  agrees  to  furnish  as  re- 
quired seventy-two  thousand  five  hundred  dol- 
lars for  the  purchase  and  repairs  of  the  property 
known  as  the  Hampton  Mills,  and  for  carrying 
on  the  manufacture  of  woollen  cloth  under  the 
management  of  the  said  Workman  and  Spinner, 
already  named. 


26  iu)\v  Tm:Y  lived  in  hampton. 

2.  John  Workman  of  the  second  part  agrees 
to  furnish  five  hundred  dollars  for  the  same  pur- 
pose. 

3.  William  Spinner  of  the  third  part  agrees 
to  furnish  two  thousand  dollars  for  the  same 
purpose. 

The  sum  of  seventy-five  thousand  dollars  thus 
contributed  is  to  be  the  capital  stock  of  the  en- 
terprise, and  when  capital  is  spoken  of  in  this 
agreement,  the  sum  now  named,  of  seventy-five 
thousand  dollars,  is  meant. 

John  Workman  and  William  Spinner,  of  the 
second  and  third  part  of  this  agreement,  agree 
to  give  all  their  time  and  skill  to  the  manufac- 
ture of  woollen  goods  at  the  said  Hampton  Mills ; 
—  they  are  to  choose  the  workmen  and  appoint 
the  foremen,  and  direct  the  manufacture.  They 
are  to  buy  the  wool  and  other  necessary  mate- 
rial ;  they  are  to  sell  the  manufactured  goods  for 
the  best  advantage  of  the  concern.  Acting  as 
the  firm  of  "  Spinner  &  Workman,"  they  are 
to  have  the  control  of  the  mill  as  entirely  as  if 
they  had  leased  it  from  the  corporation.  They 
do  this  for  the  benefit  of  all  parties  concerned, 
as  is  hereinafter  described. 

It  is  understood  and  covenanted  that  the  mill 
is  to  be  carried  on  with  the  intention  that  the 
profits  are  to  be  divided  between  the  owners, 
the  two  managers,  and  the  workmen  employed 


THE    PLAN.  27 

by  them  ;  —  that  one-third  of  the  profits  shall  be 
paid  to  the  owners,  one-third  to  managers,  and 
one-third  to  workmen. 

In  the  estimate  of  profits  for  such  division,  it 
is  agreed  that  there  shall  have  been  first  paid  as 
necessary  expenses, — 

1.  Four  per  cent  on  the  sum  of  $75,000  to 
the  owners. 

2.  Six  hundred  dollars  a  year  to  each  manager. 

3.  To  each  workman  as  may  be  agreed  with 
him,  but  on  a  scale  of  wages  intended  to  repre- 
sent three-fourths  of  the  current  rate  of  wages 
in  his  line. 

4.  If  the  mills  do  not  earn  four  per  cent, 
after  paying  the  other  expenses,  the  owners 
shall  receive  only  the  amount  which  it  does 
earn. 

It  is  further  agreed  between  the  said  Thank- 
ful Nourse  of  the  first  part  and  the  said  Spinner 
and  Workman  of  the  second  and  third  parts  of 
this  agreement,  that,  for  the  needs  of  the  mill 
in  carrying  forward  this  enterprise,  if  said  Spin- 
ner and  Workman  find  it  necessary  to  give  their 
notes  for  discount  at  any  time,  the  said  Thank- 
ful Nourse,  or  his  agents  for  him,  will  indorse 
those  notes  to  the  amount  of  thirty  thousand 
dollars  and  no  more.  And  the  said  Spinner 
and  Workman  shall  have  no  power  to  contract 
other  debts  chargeable  to  the  corporation,  except 


28  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

for  advances  on  goods  manufactured.  The  ac- 
counts of  the  firm  and  of  the  corporation  shall 
be  accurately  kept,  and  at  all  times  open  to  ex- 
amination by  either  of  these  parties  or  by  any 
stockholder,  or  any  person  commissioned  by 
one-third  of  the  workmen  in  the  mill,  who  are 
to  be  regarded  as  having  the  rights  of  partners 
in  the  concern. 

A  balance-sheet  shall  be  prepared  at  the  end 
of  every  half-year  to  show  the  profit  or  loss  of 
the  mills  in  the  last  six  months. 

If  any  balance  of  profit  appears,  after  the  ex- 
penses above  provided  for  have  been  met,  the 
owners  representing  capital  as  above  described 
shall  receive  two  per  cent  semi-annually  on  their 
stock  invested. 

The  remaining  profits  shall  be  credited  in 
three  equal  portions  but  shall  not  be  drawn  for 
division  till  the  end  of  two  years. 

One-third  shall  be  paid  to  capital  as  above 
described. 

One-third  shall  be  paid  to  the  managers. 

One-third  shall  be  paid  to  the  workmen,  —  to 
be  divided  in  the  proportion  of  the  wages  which 
they  have  already  received.  In  the  event  of  the 
death  of  any  workman,  or  of  his  leaving  the 
mill,  his  representative  in  Hampton  shall  re- 
ceive his  share  of  the  profits,  as  if  he  remained 
in  the  employ  of  the  corporation. 


THE    PLAN.  29 

At  the  end  of  five  years  the  mills  shall  be 
sold  for  the  benefit  of  all  concerned,  and  the 
profit,  if  any,  shall  be  divided  among  all  con- 
cerned, on  the  same  basis  as  that  described  for 
the  division  of  the  semi-annual  profits. 

[At  the  end  of  five  years  the  enterprise  was 
so  successful  that  this  part  of  the  agreement 
was  cancelled  by  all  concerned.] 

The  part  of  the  transaction  which  Spinner 
knew  was  difficult,  and  which  Nourse  thought 
was  impossible,  was  the  persuading  a  sufficient 
number  of  workmen  to  take  hold  on  such  terms 
as  those  described.  But  John  Workman  had 
always,  after  he  had  once  enlisted,  felt  sure 
that  that  part  could  be  brought  about.  He 
belonged,  in  particular,  to  a  workingmen's  club 
which  had  often  discussed  such  subjects.  The 
men  were  good  fellows  who  did  not  believe  that 
"the  other  fellow"  in  a  bargain  was  to  have 
nothing.  They  had  loyally  tried  to  work  out 
the  question  of  wages  on  the  same  plan  which 
should  not  involve  "knocking  down  and  drag- 
ging out."  Here  was  a  plan  with  money 
behind  it.  On  the  other  hand  there  was  noth- 
ing. The  Andalusia,  where  most  of  them  had 
worked,  was  bankrupt.  Men  were  really  trudg- 
ing about  on  foot,  seeking  chances  as  weavers 
and  dyers,  and  there  were  no  such  chances. 

What  was  offered  was  almost  starvation  wages, 


30  now    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON, 

but  there  was  no  sham  about  it.  And  every 
man  was  sure  of  a  chance  for  success.  Every 
man  was  compelled  to  invest  for  two  years  the 
remaining  quarter  of  his  income,  which  was  not 
paid  him. 

Workman  was  able  to  offer  his  tenement 
houses  at  fabulously  low  rates,  for  the  new 
company  bought  them  with  the  rest  of  the 
abandoned  property.  And,  from  the  begin- 
ning, Workman  and  Spinner  agreed  that  the 
money  of  the  company  was  to  be  made  in 
manufacturing.  It  was  not  to  be  made  out  of 
rents  or  stores  or  the  improvement  of  real 
estate  in  Hampton.  The  tenement  houses 
were  valued  at  an  appraisement,  and  stood  at 
very  low  charge  on  the  books.  Workman  said, 
therefore,  that  he  would  rent  them  for  four  per 
cent,  — what  had  been  called  in  joke  "the  idiot's 
dividend,"  and  nothing  more.  This  gave  each 
hand  a  considerable  advantage  at  the  first, 
because  he  was  a  partner  very  soon,  even  at 
"starvation  wages."  The  men  began  to  buy 
their  houses  from  the  corporation  on  low  rates 
and  terms  which  will  appear  in  another  chapter. 

Among  Workman's  friends  there  were  sev- 
eral enthusiasts,  each  of  whom  undertook  to 
engage  ten  or  twelve  hands  in  the  departments 
needed.  Much  discussion  pro  and  con  went 
forward.     At  the  last  there  was  much  shrink- 


THE    PLAN.  31 

ing  of  wives  from  the  proposed  removal.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  were  some  people  who 
had  been  wrecked  in  the  original  failure  at 
Hampton.  They  were  all  too  eager  to  take 
hold,  if  in  any  way  they  might.  Some  of  them 
proved  very  good  people  for  the  purpose.  Most 
of  them  were  the  people  who  would  not  have 
succeeded  anywhere.  By  such  means  the  hands 
were  got  together,  and  the  mill  began  to  con- 
vert wool  into  woollens. 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE    RESULTS. 

SUCH  was  the  history  of  the  new  start  of 
Hampton,  and  the  plan  on  which  the  sev- 
eral adventures  were  formed.  It  is  clear  enough 
that  if  they  had  not  been  bound  together  by 
other  ties  than  those  of  mere  business,  as  it  is 
called,  the  enterprise  would  never  have  suc- 
ceeded as  it  did,  —  indeed,  it  would  never  have 
been.  But  they  were  united  more  closely. 
Every  one  of  the  leaders  believed  that,  in  the 
true  order  of  society  —  the  order  which  the  Sav- 
iour of  man  lived  and  died  to  establish  —  there 
was  a  right  way  to  do  whatever  the  world  needed 
done.  They  believed,  therefore,  that  there  was 
a  right  way  to  make  woollen  cloth,  if  only  they 
could  find  out  what  it  was.  They  meant  to  find 
it  out,  they  were  not  afraid  to  ask  God's  bless- 
ing on  that  endeavor,  nor  to  say  to  each  other 
that  they  had  asked  it.  With  notions  and  aims 
as  high  as  these,  Mr.  Spinner  had  carried  his 
plan,  not  now  conceived  for  the  first  time,  to 
Mr.  Nourse. 

He,  too,  had  made  the  whole  subject  a  matter 


THE    RESULTS.  33 

of  most  serious  inquiry.  He  had  no  wish  to 
grow  rich  from  the  results  of  other  men's  in- 
dustry, unless  they,  in  their  places,  had  a  chance 
to  prosper  also.  He  knew,  however,  that  manu- 
facturing enterprise  or  mercantile  adventure 
have  their  laws,  as  absolute  as  those  of  rain- 
fall or  of  tide-waves.  He  knew  that,  as  he 
could  not  overpower  those  laws,  more  than 
King  Canute  could  resist  the  flowing  sea,  what- 
ever his  wealth  and  power,  he  could  not,  on  the 
other  hand,  withstand  them  by  any  degree  of 
sentiment  or  tenderness.  He  knew  that  the 
laws  of  trade  and  of  social  order  must  be  studied, 
and  that  allowance  must  be  made  for  them.  Mr. 
Workman,  and  Mr.  Spinner  as  well,  wanted  to 
see  the  right  thing  done.  They  were  both  as 
proud  that  they  were  not  born  with  silver  spoons 
in  their  mouths,  as  was  ever  any  prince  that  he 
was  cradled  in  purple.  They  were  in  no  sort 
beggars  for  a  change  of  position.  They  were 
workmen,  and  good  workmen ;  they  had  been 
trained  to  their  craft,  and  knew  how  to  do  their 
work.  What  they  wanted  was,  that  the  share 
which  they  contributed  in  the  clothing  of  the 
world  should  be  as  cordially  recognized  as  every 
other  man's  share.  They  knew  that  many  others 
had  a  share  in  it,  —  capitalist,  wool-grower,  trans- 
porter, merchant,  tailor,  and  stitching-girl.  They 
believed  that  a  fair  division  could  be  made  some- 


34  HOW    TIIEY    LIVED    I\     HAMPTON. 

how,  which  should  recognize  how  much  each  of 
these  parties  fairly  earned  and  deserved  to  have. 
This  they  wanted  for  themselves  and  their  asso- 
ciates. They  asked  for  no  more.  But  they 
were  satisfied  with  nothing  less.  Had  any  one 
asked  either  of  these  men  for  charity,  he  would 
have  received  what  he  asked  for  promptly.  For 
they  all  understood  what  the  word  "  charity  " 
means,  and  acknowledged  the  obligation  it  de- 
scribes. But  all  of  them  knew  that  the  relations 
between  capital,  which  provided  tools  and  mate- 
rials and  work,  which  uses  tools  to  manufacture 
materials,  should  not  be  relations  of  sentiment, 
or  of  charity,  or  of  force.  They  should  be  rela- 
tions founded  on  the  eternal  laws  of  God.  And, 
as  all  of  them  were  Christian  men,  they  believed 
that  these  laws  were  revealed  in  the  Gospel. 

Recognizing,  then,  that  for  making  woollen 
cloth,  and  bringing  it  to  a  fit  market,  three  co- 
adjutors were  necessary,  —  capital,  work,  and 
the  directing  skill  which  should  enable  capital 
to  use  the  workman's  industry ;  they  agreed 
that  these  three  agencies  should  share  equally 
in  the  profit  of  the  article  produced.  The  reader 
has  seen  the  simple  plan  which  they  adopted. 

It  worked  better  than  they  had  dared  to 
hope.  For  the  first  seven  months,  indeed,  af- 
ter the  machinery  had  been  renewed,  the  mills 
repaired,  and  the  new  system  set  going,  they 


THE    RESULTS.  35 

had  up-hill  work.  The  market  was  flooded 
with  the  stock  of  bankrupt  concerns,  forced 
upon  buyers  by  the  assignees  and  creditors. 
Never,  Spinner  told  me,  had  prices  sunk  so 
low,  and  never  had  the  world  looked  so  blackly 
on  such  adventure.  But  he  had  never  given 
up  his  conviction,  that  the  world  must  have 
warm  clothing,  —  at  least  in  the  zones  which 
were  north  of  ten  degrees  of  Northern  Lati- 
tude. He  kept  on  making  cloth, — better  and 
better,  he  said,  —  as  he  was  able  to  test  his 
machinery  and  to  train  his  hands,  without  over- 
working them.  He  knew,  he  said,  to  a  quarter 
of  a  cent,  what  his  cloth  cost  him.  He  was 
not  yet  obliged  to  sell  a  yard  beneath  that 
cost.  He  did  sell  a  little  at  a  very  small  ad- 
vance upon  it.  And  he  piled  up  a  good  deal, 
waiting  for  a  rise.  After  seven  months,  the 
flood  came.  It  wavered  at  first,  and  then 
poured  in,  cheerfully  and  hopefully.  Some 
jobbers,  who  had  taken  a  little  of  his  cloth 
on  commission,  had  received  very  flattering 
orders  for  more,  amounting  almost  to  carte- 
blanche  for  price ;  so  sound  had  the  goods 
proved,  and  so  well  had  the  tailors  been 
pleased  who  had  used  them.  He  was  glad 
that  he  had  insisted  that  the  voyage  should 
be  a  two  years'  voyage.  But  he  began  now 
to  post  very  encouraging  bulletins  on  his  news- 


36  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

boards.  He  would  not  make  goods  by  caucus, 
he  said.  But  he  did  mean  that  men  and  boys 
should  know  which  way  the  stream  was  run- 
ning which  carried  the  fortunes  of  them  all. 

He  had,  therefore,  a  regular  habit  of  placing 
on  his  bulletin  board  such  correspondence  or 
other  news  as  he  thought  the  hands  would  be 
glad  to  read.  I  saved  one  or  two  of  the  old 
bulletins  which  he  gave  to  me. 

No.  23. 

"  Extract  from  a  letter  from  New  York  :  — 
From  Mercer  and  Goodenough,  this  despatch 
is  just  received.  Sold  all  A.  A.  at  four  eighths 
advance.     Order  for  twice  as  much." 

For  a  considerable  time  after  the  mill  began 
to  run,  they  felt  the  worth  of  the  new  power 
enlisted.  People  were  living  very  economical- 
ly, because  they  had  only  three-quarters  of  the 
wages  they  were  used  to.  But  every  one  of 
these  same  people  had  been  living  more  eco- 
nomically, because  they  had  no  wages.  That 
was  undoubtedly  a  good  stepping-stone  for  the 
new  plan.  After  the  beginning,  however,  there 
came  a  period  of  terrible  depression  of  feeling. 
The  absolute  failure  to  sell  any  goods  reacted 
on  the  men  employed.  They  were  used  to 
receiving  their  pay  without  any  great  thought 


THE    RESULTS.  37 

of  the  run  of  trade  which  supplied  it.  But  to 
meet  Mr.  Spinner  when  he  came  back  from 
New  York,  or  to  hear  him  talk,  if  he  would 
talk,  after  he  had  received  his  mail,  and  to 
know  that  absolutely  no  money  had  come  into 
the  concern,  —  this  dismayed  men  who  knew, 
of  course,  that  the  thing  could  not  run  on 
forever  on  Mr.  Nourse's  original  investment. 
They  felt  the  reflection  of  the  depression  in 
the  market,  more,  probably,  than  he  would  have 
done.  This  was  the  real  "Slough  of  Despond" 
of  the  enterprise.  Spinner  spoke  to  me  of  it, 
and  described  it  with  a  sort  of  shudder.  And 
afterward  Holmes  and  Dyer  and  Sheridan  and 
Workman,  —  indeed,  all  of  the  older  hands  with 
whom  I  talked,  spoke  of  it,  and  with  bated 
breath,  as  if  they  hoped  they  might  never 
have  to  go  through  such  an  experience  again. 

"  But  this  I  have  noticed,  Mr.  Freeman,"  said 
Holmes  to  me,  "  unless  a  man  pulls  through  his 
Slough  of  Despond  in  any  undertaking,  he  is  no 
good.  And  I  say  that  a  woollen  mill  must  live 
the  life  of  a  man.  Anyhow,  we  went  through 
it.  It  was  a  good  lesson  for  every  one  of  us 
who  v.'as  in  it. 

"  We  had  a  revival  meeting,  if  you  will  let 
me  call  it  so,  about  when  things  were  at  their 
worst.  No,  I  do  not  mean  what  I  suppose  you 
might  call  a  religious  revival,  but  there  was  a 


38  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

good  deal  of  religion  in  it,  and,  if  there  had 
not  been,  you  and  I  would  not  be  talking  here. 
Almost  all  tlie  leaders  spoke.  These  gentle- 
men you  know,  all  spoke.  And  they  put  it  to 
the  hands,  as  you  might  speak  to  the  men  in  a 
sinking  ship,  if  you  were  encouraging  them  to 
pump.  But  they  put  it  man-fashion.  They 
made  the  simplest  wool-picker  there  under- 
stand that  if  he  deserted  the  ship  he  was  play- 
ing false  to  every  man  and  every  woman  in 
the  land,  who  was  hoping  for  better  times,  bet- 
ter wages,  and  a  better  system.  I  know  I  told 
the  men  to  go  home  and  pray  God  to  help  to 
carry  it  through.  I  know  I  took  my  own  ad- 
vice, and  I  think  others  did. 

"  That  meeting  was  the  crisis.  One  or  two 
fellows  left  us,  —  'for  their  country's  good.' 
But  there  was  no  grumbling  after  that,  and 
even  the  work  of  the  mill  seemed  to  be  bet- 
ter, and  I  know  Workman  said  the  same  thing. 
It  was  some  weeks  before  the  business  situation 
of  the  country  seemed  better.  But  we  felt  bet- 
ter as  soon  as  we  openly  recognized  the  difB- 
culty  we  were  in,  —  well,  and,  so  to  speak, 
pledged  ourselves  to  each  other.  Up  to  that 
time,  we  had  all  been  prophesying  success,  — • 
'smooth  things,'  as  I  said  last  night.  When 
that  meeting  came,  we  owned  that  the  whole 
voyage  was  not  a  summer  sail,  and  that  every 


THE    RESULTS.  39 

man  had  got  to  put  his  shoulder  to  the  wheel, 
if  we  were  to  go  through  ;  —  yes,  and  to  pray 
God  to  help  him.  That  is  the  reason  why  I 
say  that  we  never  really  prospered  till  we  had 
gone  through  the  'Slough  of  Despond.'" 

It  was  not  the  Slough  of  Despond,  but  the 
reason  of  the  thing,  which  induced  Spinner 
and  Workman,  with  Mr.  Nourse's  approval,  to 
yield  from  the  rigor  of  the  original  plan,  which 
had  demanded  what  Spinner  had  called  "a  two 
years'  voyage."  At  the  end  of  the  first  quarter 
of  the  second  year  the  thing  was  well  estab- 
lished, and  in  working  order.  Spinner  had  a 
large  offer  made  him  in  New  York  for  all  the 
goods  he  had  been  piling  up,  and,  though  the 
market  was  probably  still  to  rise,  he  determined 
not  to  bet  on  the  possibility,  but  sold  out  for 
cash,  so  as  to  clear  all  his  warehouses.  And 
Spinner  said  to  me  that,  on  the  whole,  in  his 
administration,  he  had  gone  on  the  principle 
that  they  were  manufacturers  and  not  specula- 
tors. "  If  I  could  sell  our  goods  for  what  it 
cost  us  to  make  them,  with  a  fair  profit,  and  a 
fair  margin  to  cover  the  losses  on  sales  I  was 
sometimes  forced  to  make,  because  I  needed 
money,  —  why,  I  thought  I  had  better  sell. 
I  do  not  mean  I  had  no  right  to  hold  on. 
Probably  I  had  such  a  right.  But  I  do  not 
think  the  right  is  the  same,  when   I   am  the 


40  lUnV    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

manager,  as  I  am  here,  for  a  hundred  or  two 
people  who  arc  joint  owners  in  the  goods,  as  it 
would  be,  —  say,  were  I  the  owner  of  the  An- 
dalusia, and  owned  all  the  goods  myself.  Now 
I  am  a  trustee.     Then  I  should  be  an  owner." 

I  took  to  heart  what  he  said.  And  as  I 
looked  over  his  books  one  day,  I  could  see  the 
advantages  the  concern  had  derived  from  his 
rule.  It  need  not  be  said  that  the  public 
gained  a  similar  advantage.  It  is  undoubtedly 
for  the  advantage  of  the  public  that  prices 
should  not  change  by  sudden  leaps,  and  that 
the  movements  of  trade  shall  not  be  affected 
by  what  are  rightly  called  speculative  plans. 
The  co-operators  of  Hampton  did  not,  I  sup- 
pose, consider  this  advantage  in  making  up 
their  system.  But  it  was  one  of  the  many 
points  in  which  they  builded  better  than  they 
knew. 

Acting  upon  this  policy,  Mr.  Spinner  emptied 
his  storehouses,  and,  as  he  sold  for  cash  on 
very  short  credit,  he  had  money  in  hand.  Why 
should  the  first  voyage  be  a  two  years'  voyage } 
They  were  already  in  port.  He  was  able  to  de- 
clare his  first  dividend.  Probably  no  person  but 
himself  and  Workman  had  believed  it  would 
come  out  so  well.  They  had  made  few  losses, 
—  nothing,  indeed,  of  considerable  account. 
And    when    the    shares   came    to    be    divided 


THE    RESULTS.  4I 

among  all  hands  it  proved  that,  though  so  late 
a  payment,  it  was  large  enough  to  compensate 
every  one  for  the  waiting. 

"  My  deary,"  said  the  old  woman  who  washed 
the  windows,  when  Spinner  paid  her  first 
money-dividend  to  her,  "  if  I  had  had  the 
money,  I  should  have  spent  it."  And  her 
simple  confession  was  doubtless  true  with  a 
great  many  more  of  these  shareholders,  whose 
investment  in  work  had  been  larger  than  hers. 

From  that  time  till  the  period  of  my  visit  the 
quarterly  balance-sheet  had  been  printed  for 
the  use  of  the  workmen.  It  was  theirs  as 
much  as  it  was  Mr.  Nourse's.  They  were  his 
partners  and  knew  they  were,  and  by  no  senti- 
mental statement  merely.  Gradually  they  came 
to  use  the  language  of  owners :  "  We  shall  do 
this  ; "  "  We  shall  do  that ;  "  "  We  made  a  mis- 
take in  running  so  long  on  such  a  pattern  ; " 
"  We  made  a  good  thing  of  this."  From  the 
beginning  they  felt  the  need  of  avoiding  waste. 
"There  is  not  a  mill  on  this  stream  but  uses 
twice  as  much  oil  as  I  do  ; "  that  was  the  boast 
which  a  young  man  made  to  me,  who  met  the 
requisitions  of  the  different  rooms  for  the  oil  of 
their  machinery. 

Spinner  and  Workman,  in  giving  me  the 
accounts  which  I  have  digested  in  these  chap- 
ters, both  spoke  as  if  they  were  going  back  to 


42  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

a  time  far  distant.  In  point  of  fact,  the  estab- 
lishment at  Hampton  was  made  only  seven  years 
before.  But  they  had  seen  so  rapid  a  develop- 
ment since  their  original  timid  plans,  that  they 
found  it  difficult  sometimes  to  carry  themselves 
to  those  antediluvian  days.  More  than  once 
Spinner  came  to  me,  after  he  had  narrated 
something,  to  say  that,  on  recurring  to  his 
notes  on  his  memory,  he  found  that  he  had 
antedated  or  postdated  occurrences,  and  that 
he  wanted  to  correct  his  original  statement ; 
for  they  both  knew  that  I  was  making  memo- 
randa, and  that  I  wished  to  draw  up  some  such 
statement  as  I  am  making  now. 

At  the  time  I  visited  them  the  whole  estab- 
lishment was  running  on  as  steadily  as  any 
manufacturing  town  in  the  country.  A  con- 
siderable part  of  Thankful  Nourse's  share  in  the 
capital  had  been  taken  off  his  hands  by  pur- 
chase from  different  heads  of  rooms,  and,  in 
one  or  two  instances,  by  the  widows  of  former 
workmen,  who  wished  to  remain  in  the  place 
themselves,  and  liked  to  feel  that  they  owned  a 
part  of  the  plant.  "Corporation  is  co-operation" 
— this  was  a  favorite  saw  of  Spinner,  Workman, 
and  of  a  man  named  Holmes,  of  whom  I  have 
spoken,  and  shall  have  occasion  to  speak  again. 

I  copy  one  of  their  balance  sheets  to  show 
its  form. 


THE    RESULTS.  43 

No.  37. 
Hampton  Mills  Balance  Sheet  for  Six  Months. 

Cr. 

By  sales  of  manufactured  goods,  after  commis- 
sions and  expenses  have  been  deducted    .   $167,892  II 

Dr. 

To  amount  work  of  operatives  .    $15,297  14 

To  amount  paid  salaries.  Work- 
man and  Spinner     ....  300  00 

For  repairs  (macliinery  and  mill )        6,981    12 

Wool  and  supplies 111,291    14 

Interest  paid  to  Thankful  Nourse, 

Esq.,  and  to  Workman  and 

Spinner 1,500  00 

Balance  of  profit  to  be  divided  .      38,522  71 

$167,892  II 

At  the  very  beginning,  the  works  had  gone 
through  their  share  of  the  difficulties  of  a  begin- 
ning. After  that  slough  of  despond  which  has 
been  described  to  the  reader,  there  had  come 
along  heavy  depression  of  business,  which  had 
very  severely  tried  the  temper  of  all  these  men, 
and  which  they  thought  might  try  the  sympathies 
and  steadiness  of  their  friend  Thankful  Nourse. 
I  believe,  myself,  that  they  quite  misapprehended 
him  in  this  impression.  I  did  not  say  so  to  them, 
but  I  am  quite  willing  to  say  here,  that  I  think 
Mr.  Nourse  had  had  quite  too  much  experience 


44  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

in  business  to  suppose  that  there  were  to  be 
years  of  plenty  without  years  of  famine  follow- 
ing them.  I  do  not  believe  that  in  New  Zea- 
land, or  Boothia  Felix,  or  Novgorod,  or  the 
Malayan  Islands,  or  wherever  his  wandering 
disposition  had  carried  him,  he  gave  one  anx- 
ious thought  to  the  investment  he  had  made 
at  Hampton.  I  suppose  that,  like  most  other 
capitalists,  who  have  their  passions  under  con- 
trol, —  or,  why  should  I  not  say  frankly,  who 
are  religious  men  .''  —  he  was  willing  to  take  the 
better  and  the  worse  together,  and  to  submit 
with  modesty  and  with  loyalty  to  what  he  would 
frankly  have  called  the  "providence  of  God." 
I  knew  Nourse  at  one  time  very  well,  and  I  re- 
member that  one  of  his  favorite  axioms,  borrowed 
from  Mr.  Carlyle,  was,  "  There  was  no  act  of 
Parliament  that  I  should  be  happy."  And  he 
would  apply  this  axiom  in  a  dozen  different 
ways.  He  would  say,  there  was  no  act  of  Par- 
liament that  the  Andalusia  should  declare  ten 
per  cent ;  there  was  no  act  of  Parliament  that 
Mr.  Hayes  should  receive  two-thirds  of  the 
votes  for  president ;  there  was  no  act  of  Parli- 
ament that  the  Britannia  should  arrive  after  a 
nine  days'  passage.  In  other  words,  he  was 
willing  to  live  in  God's  world,  subject  to  some 
orders  besides  his  own,  and  was  not  in  the 
habit  of  complaining,  because  in  any  one  year 


THE    RESULTS.  45 

or  two  years,  things  did  not  turn  out  as  he 
would  have  them  turn  out. 

He  had  not  said  so  to  Spinner  in  his  negotia- 
tions with  Spinner,  but  all  the  same  he  had  not 
come  to  the  determination  to  invest  in  this  tri- 
partite arrangement,  without  solitary  thought 
and  without  prayer.  He  believed  that  he  had 
done  the  right  thing  in  investing  his  money  as 
he  had  done,  although  he  had  done  a  thing 
wholly  new.  Having  come  to  this  determina- 
tion, having  asked  God's  help  in  making  this  de- 
termination, he  held  to  this  determination.  If 
anybody  had  spoken  to  him  about  it,  he  would 
have  been  seriously  annoyed ;  but,  if  it  were  a 
person  to  whom  he  thought  he  must  make  an 
answer,  —  as,  for  instance,  to  his  wife,  possibly  to 
an  old  friend  like  me,  —  he  would  have  said, 
probably,  "  I  have  put  my  hand  to  the  plough, 
and  I  do  not  propose  to  turn  back." 

He  would  have  meant  that  he  regarded  the 
capital  given  to  him  as  given  to  him  in  trust  to 
use  for  the  best  purposes.  He  had  tried  to  use 
it  for  the  best  purposes  when  he  made  this  dis- 
posal of  it,  and  he  would  not  worry  himself, 
week  by  week,  or  month  by  month,  or  even 
year  by  year,  in  attending  to  the  details.  He 
would  not  dig  up  the  tree  which  he  had 
intentionally  planted  for  a  certain  purpose 
in     his     lawn,    because,    at    the     end    of    the 


46  HOW    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

second  year  or  the  third  year,  he  thought 
that  the  tree  was  not  rooting  itself  properly. 

So  much  for  the  difficulties  of  the  enterprise 
as  they  effected  capital.  They  were  not  so 
great  as  Spinner  and  Workman  fancied  they 
were.  To  neither  Spinner  nor  Workman  could 
Mr.  Nourse  say  all  I  did,  nor  were  they  accus- 
tomed to  look  at  it  from  the  point  of  view 
which  is,  I  am  sure,  the  true  one. 

In  another  chapter  I  will  show  more  at 
length  than  is  worth  while  here,  the  experi- 
ences these  two  gentlemen  themselves  had. 
They  were  occupying  a  position  which  ap- 
peared to  be  somewhat  new.  They  were  sub- 
ject to  a  great  deal  of  criticism  from  the  men 
whom  they  were  a  little  apt  to  call  "sea-law- 
yers," although  they  had  never  been  to  sea. 
They  borrowed  this  phrase  from  the  sailors 
whom  they  knew  very  well  in  earlier  life,  who 
use  it  as  an  expression  of  contempt,  by  which 
they  describe  the  men  who  are  forever  inciting 
sailors  to  mutinous  or  disrespectful  thoughts  of 
their  employers,  while  they  are  not  themselves 
good  seamen.  There  are  such  men  in  all  indus- 
tries, whether  they  go  to  sea  or  not.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  Spinner  and  Workman  both  despised 
them,  but  still  such  critics  had  it  in  their  power 
to  make  them  very  unhappy.  Such  critics  were 
constantly  trying  to  make  the  hands  think  that 


THE    RESULTS.  4/ 

Workman  and  Spinner  overestimated  them- 
selves, —  took  airs  upon  themselves,  —  and, 
when  dividends  were  made,  took  more  than 
they  had  earned.  The  phrase,  which  Spinner 
had  himself  used  when  he  said  that  he  was  to 
be  a  buffer  between  two  cars  and,  if  he  could, 
ameliorate  the  shock,  seemed  a  very  pat  one  to 
describe  the  misfortunes  which  belong  to  the 
midway  position.  Workman  said  to  me  one 
day,  half  laughing,  that  he  thought  they  would 
have  fared  better  if  there  had  been  an  old  es- 
tablished name  by  which  they  could  be  called. 
In  point  of  fact,  they  were  called  "  managers " 
of  the  mill,  and  the  dividend  paid  to  them 
was  the  dividend  paid  to  "management."  He 
showed  me  a  little  treatise  on  the  subject, 
written  by  I  do  not  know  whom,  which  said 
that  in  France  the  man  would  be  called  the 
entrepreneur,  meaning  the  person  who  took  hold 
between  one  end  and  the  other.  We  have  the 
same  root  in  our  word  "  enterprise,"  and  Work- 
man said  he  was  tempted  to  call  himself  an 
"  enterpriser,"  and  he  wished  that  somebody 
had  invented  such  a  word  two  hundred  years 
ago.  He  said,  if  it  could  be  understood  when 
they  were  spoken  of,  that  the  whole  thing  ex- 
isted because  they  were  there,  it  would  be  bet- 
ter for  them  both,  and  he  felt  that  if  some  good 
word  could  express  this  every  time  they  were 


48  HOW    THKY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

spoken  of  it  would  be  a  good  thing.  "  Now," 
he  said,  "  the  word  '  manager '  has  in  itself  not 
a  bad  sound,  but  when  we  speak  of  managing  a 
thing,  we  sometimes  imply  that  we  are  manag- 
ing it  in  an  underhand  way.  It  is  not  always 
so.  I  believe  nobody  thinks  the  '  manager '  of 
a  theatre  is  necessarily  a  mean  man  ;  but  the 
moment  we  speak  of  a  '  political  manager,'  we 
have  the  idea  of  a  trick.  I  could  wish,  there- 
fore," he  said,  "that  we  were  not  called  the 
management,  but  we  are,  and  we  have  to  bear 
our  burden  as  well  as  we  can." 

Nor  were  the  workmen  free  from  their  share 
of  annoyances.  On  the  whole,  the  body  cor- 
porate of  Hampton  sloughed  off  the  inferior 
and  dissatisfied  people.  The  management  was 
strong  enough,  and  their  friends  were  strong 
enough,  to  say  squarely  to  the  sea-lawyers  and 
other  such  that  if  they  did  not  like  to  stay  at 
Hampton  there  was  no  act  of  Parliament  by 
which  they  need  stay  there. 

They  could  be  dismissed,  at  very  short  notice, 
from  the  mills  ;  and  I  was  amused  to  find  that 
this  democratic  management  was  very  much 
more  peremptory  in  such  dismissals  than  were 
the  directors  of  many  a  manufacturing  estab- 
lishment which  I  had  seen  before,  who  were, 
to  a  large  extent,  afraid  of  irritating  or  wound- 
ing  the  feelings   of   their  hands.      There  was 


THE    RESULTS.  49 

no  reason  for  any  such  fear  in  this  case,  be- 
cause the  hands  were,  practically,  with  the 
management,  the  directors  of  the  whole  con- 
cern. On  the  whole,  as  I  say,  the  hands 
were  loyal  to  the  plan.  They  were  more  and 
more  interested  in  the  plan.  It  cultivated  their 
self-respect,  and,  as  the  reader  has  been  told, 
it  proved  profitable  to  them.  But  none  the 
less  were  they  subject  to  invasions  from  com- 
mittees of  inspection  and  committees  of  various 
delegates  from  county  conventions,  from  "  Fed- 
erations of  Toilers,"  from  "  Organizations  of  In- 
dustry," from  "Unions  of  Handicraft,"  and  from 
various  other  organizations  which  had  much  more 
picturesque  and  mediaeval  names.  And  these 
delegates  either  had  some  "  wrong,"  showing 
that  they  were  offended  by  the  somewhat  inde- 
pendent attitude  of  Hampton,  or  they  had  some 
new  plan  for  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  which  they  wanted  to  propose  to  the 
Hampton  workmen.  Now  the  Hampton  work- 
men were,  in  fact,  the  most  democratic  set  of 
people  in  the  world.  They  were  not  proud, 
they  appreciated  good-fellowship  and  camarad- 
erie as  much  as  any  men  did  ;  but  they  were 
beginning  to  own  their  own  mill,  they  did  have 
a  third  part  of  the  profits  of  it,  they  wanted  it 
to  succeed,  and  they  wanted  it  to  succeed  in 
their  own  way.      They  disliked  to  be  lectured 


50  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

about  the  ct)ncluct  of  their  business  as  much  as 
any  purse-proud  capitaHst  in  Lynn  or  in  Ger- 
mantown  dishkes  to  be  lectured  about  his.  Still 
it  was  not  a  nice  thing,  it  was  not  an  agreeable 
thing,  to  be  placarded  in  all  the  workmen's  jour- 
nals of  the  country  as  being  only  a  mitigated  set 
of  scabs,  or  as  being  pretenders  in  wolves'  cloth- 
ing, or  as  being  people  who,  having  got  a  snug 
thing  themselves,  were  trying  to  kick  down  the 
ladder  by  which  they  had  risen.  All  the  same, 
they  had  this  burden  to  bear ;  and  it  was  among 
the  difficulties  of  the  earlier  days  at  Hampton. 

It  is  better  to  speak  of  all  those  difficulties  to- 
gether, than  to  attempt  to  convey,  in  any  his- 
torical narrative,  the  way  in  which  they  played 
in  with  each  other,  antagonized  each  other,  and, 
at  the  same  time,  corrected  each  other.  Gradu- 
ally everybody,  probably,  came  to  feel  that,  to 
borrow  Mr.  Nourse's  maxim,  there  was  no  act 
of  Parliament  that  Hampton  should  go  on 
without  its  rubs  and  periods  of  starvation.  On 
the  w^hole,  it  had  become  more  and  more  a  fixed 
institution,  with  its  own  traditions, — and  that 
is  a  matter  of  great  importance,  — with  its  own 
habits,  which  sprung  from  these  traditions,  — 
and  with  that  success  which  belongs  alike  to 
established  traditions  and  established  habits. 

To  sum  up,  under  a  few  general  heads,  the 
more  remarkable  of  these  successes,  I  think  I 


THE    RESULTS.  5  I 

should  say,  first  of  all,  that  the  system  had 
brought  in  and  kept  in  a  very  superior  set  of 
workmen  and  workwomen.  There  were  not  so 
many  women  engaged  as  there  would  generally 
have  been  in  a  mill  of  the  size,  and,  as  will  be 
seen  in  another  chapter,  there  were  very  few 
children  engaged.  But  I  knew  enough  of  the 
woollen  manufacture  to  know  that  the  intelli- 
gence, quickness,  promptness,  and  effectiveness 
of  the  slowest  and  poorest  hands  in  any  room 
was  well  up  to  the  standard  of  the  better  half  of 
the  workmen  or  workwomen  who  would  have 
been  engaged  in  the  same  room  in  an  ordinary 
establishment.  I  spoke  to  Spinner  about  this, 
and  he  said  I  was  certainly  right.  He  said  he 
had  thought  of  it  a  great  deal ;  he  at  one  time 
tried  to  put  in  figures  some  statement  of  the 
advantage  which  they  derived  from  the  clear  and 
undoubted  superiority  of  their  work-people.  He 
had  not  found  it  possible  to  make  any  tabular 
or  distinctive  statement.  "  But  it  amounts  to 
this,"  he  said.  "They  are  all  determined  that 
this  thing  shall  succeed  ;  they  are  determined 
the  cloth  shall  be  good,  and  shall  maintain  the 
reputation  that  it  has  in  the  market.  If  there 
is  any  new  style,  if  there  is  a  bit  of  new  ma- 
chinery, if  there  is  a  new  fad  about  dyeing, — no 
matter  what  it  is,  it  is  a  thing  that  interests  them 
as  much  as  a  new  baby  interests  the  people  in 


52  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

the  house  where  it  is  born.  They  pet  the  baby 
and  cuddle  it  and  do  everything  they  can  to 
make  the  new  plan  prove  satisfactory."  In  the 
long  run,  this  is  evidently  so.  I  am  disposed  to 
think  it  springs  from  self-respect  quite  as  much 
as  from  self-interest,  to  which  it  might  ordinarily 
be  ascribed,  and  it  is  of  great  value  in  any  work. 
And  when  you  come  to  any  change,  —  when  one 
of  the  heads  of  a  room,  for  instance,  finds  it  for 
his  advantage  to  take  a  higher  place  in  some 
other  mill,  when  you  want  to  promote  somebody 
to  the  vacant  position,  you  find  that  the  people 
who  have  been  faithful  in  few  things  are  really 
able  to  be  masters  of  many  things,  and  that  you 
can  promote  them  without  difficulty,  and  with- 
out injury  to  the  running  of  your  organism. 

I  am  not  quite  sure  whether  I  am  right,  but 
the  saving  of  material  proved  also  to  be  very 
considerable.  Even  in  such  a  detail  as  this  of 
oil,  which  is  a  very  considerable  charge  in  a  wool- 
len mill,  the  young  men  who  had  the  care  of  the 
oil-room  were  so  careful  that,  very  early  in  the 
affair.  Workman  and  Spinner  found  that  these 
fellows  had  driven  up  the  others  to  care,  amount- 
ing almost  to  parsimony,  indeed,  which  involved 
very  considerable  reduction.  Among  the  papers 
which  I  brought  away,  as  memorials  of  my  visit, 
is  a  little  printed  bulletin,  numbered  13,  which 
is  a  boast  that,  in  the  four   weeks   preceding, 


THE    RESULTS.  53 

seventy-three  gallons  of  oil  had  been  saved  com- 
pared with  the  expenditure  in  the  corresponding 
four  weeks  in  the  preceding  year.  In  the  reduc- 
tion of  the  amount  of  wool  used,  Workman 
himself  acknowledged  to  me  that  he  had  been 
surprised.  They  told  me  that,  at  the  begin- 
ning, it  was  not  infrequent  to  find  that,  with 
the  same  number  of  yards  completed,  one  per 
cent  of  wool  had  been  saved  in  a  single  week. 
Of  course  such  improvement  as  this  could  not 
go  on  forever.  But  it  hardly  ever  happened 
that  the  hands  relaxed  the  care  to  which  they 
were  trained,  partly  by  self-interest,  partly  by 
loyalty,  and  partly  indeed,  by  pride.  They 
entered  into  the  feeling  of  an  old-fashioned 
housekeeper,  who  hates  to  see  things  thrown 
away.  She  even  wants  her  children  to  eat 
after  their  hunger  is  satisfied,  because  she  does 
not  like  to  have  anything  left  on  the  plate. 
Everybody  in  every  department  of  these  mills 
had  that  same  unwillingness  to  see  anything 
lost  which  might  have  been  made  useful.  In 
another  chapter,  I  will  describe  at  some  length 
the  pride  which  I  found  all  the  leaders  of  the 
system  taking  in  the  young  life  of  their  vil- 
lage. Seven  years  had  changed  the  boys  and 
girls  of  ten  into  young  men  and  women  of 
seventeen,  —  the  most  miraculous  change  which 
takes  place  in  human  life.     It  required  no  hint 


54  "OW    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

from  those  who  were  most  interested,  to  make 
me  see  that  these  young  men  and  maidens  were 
people  of  a  type  quite  different  from  the  young 
people  of  their  age  whom  one  would  find  in 
a  manufacturing  town,  where  everything  had 
been  neglected,  and  where  no  central  power 
was  trying  to  bring  out  the  very  best  training 
for  the  young,  and  to  surround  them  with  the 
most  cheerful  and  happy  influences: 

Without  going  farther  into  such  details,  it  may 
be  said  that  nothing  is  so  successful  as  success. 
The  financial  success  of  Hampton  appears  to 
me,  now  that  I  am  looking  back  upon  the  whole, 
as  the  least  interesting  and  the  least  impor- 
tant feature  in  its  administration  and  in  its  his- 
tory. I  shall  hardly  be  believed,  but  I  think 
that  four  out  of  five,  nay,  perhaps  that  all  of 
the  leading  members  of  the  community  would 
say,  that  they  have  ceased  to  think  of  the  finan- 
cial success  as  being  the  first  matter  which  they 
considered.  They  found  themselves  in  a  place 
where  there  was  no  longer  any  irritation  in  the 
discharge  of  their  daily  duty.  Everybody  knew 
he  was  justly  treated.  There  was  no  longer  that 
angry  question  why  things  were  not  otherwise, 
w^hich,  under  other  circumstances,  would  have 
embittered  the  first  waking  at  morning,  would 
have  embittered  every  morsel  of  food,  would 
have  embittered  the  hour  when  he  retired  to  bed 


THE    RESULTS.  55 

at  night.  This  was  all  gone.  Whether  the  thing 
succeeded  or  not,  the  tiling  was  fair,  and  this 
sense  of  fairness  gave  an  evenness  to  people's 
lives  which  the  older  members  of  the  commu- 
nity knew  how  to  value.  Next  to  this,  I  should 
say  that  there  was  a  certain  enlargement  of  life, 
which  they  could  hardly  define  themselves,  per- 
haps, and  perhaps  did  not  compare  with  the 
somewhat  limited  range  of  the  life  of  people,  who 
were  taking  care  of  themselves  and  taking  care 
of  none  beside.  These  people  were  living,  not 
a  mere  personal  life,  but  in  the  life  of  the  com- 
munity. They  had  all  common  interests,  and 
these  interests  were  really  large  interests.  To 
be  taken  out  of  themselves, — to  be  thinking  of 
something  better  than  their  own  headaches  and 
heartaches,  —  this  was  in  itself  an  advantage 
which,  whether  they  knew  how  to  state  it  in 
words  or  not,  affected  every  hour  of  every  day. 

The  great  essential  of  all  society  is,  that  the 
lines  of  promotion  be  kept  open.  A  man  can 
bear  even  a  very  hard  life,  if  he  has  reason  to 
think  that  next  week  something  is  going  to  open 
before  him  which  will  enable  him  to  throw  off 
this  or  that  discomfort  of  to-day.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  man  will  chafe  in  a  very  prosperous  life, 
if  you  tell  him  that,  by  any  fatality,  he  must  live 
on  with  that  machinery,  in  that  habit,  eating 
that  food,  and  doing  that  work  forever.     Open 


56  now    TIIKV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

promotion  is  the  central  word  for  American  so- 
ciety and  American  life.  This  open  promotion 
was  the  privilege  of  every  man  and  woman,  boy 
and  girl,  in  Hampton.  It  might  not  come  very 
soon,  but  every  one  knew  that  it  was  ready  and 
possible.  It  will  be  shown  in  another  chapter 
that  the  boys  and  girls  were  by  no  means  chained 
or  constrained  to  a  future  in  which  they  should 
be  operatives  in  a  woollen  factory,  their  life  long. 
Already  there  were  instances  where  the  young 
people  who  had  this  taste  or  that  gift,  leading 
them  into  other  occupations,  had  followed  those 
tastes  or  used  those  gifts.  Nobody  felt  com- 
pelled, by  the  law  of  the  instrument,  to  accept 
one  position  or  another.  There  was,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  openness  of  choice  which  seems 
to  be  the  requisite  of  any  happy  life. 

This  is  a  poor  enough  statement  of  details, 
and  a  poor  enough  effort  to  analyze  the  prosper- 
ity of  a  successful  community.  Perhaps  it  would 
have  been  as  well  to  say  that  these  people  had,  on 
the  whole,  tried  to  meet  the  duties  which  came  to 
them,  as  Christian  men  and  women.  They  had 
done  their  best,  on  the  whole,  to  carry  out  the 
Christian  law  of  love  ;  they  certainly  were  living 
daily  with  the  loyal  hope  that  the  future  was  to 
be  even  better  than  the  present ;  and  this  love 
and  this  faith  were  based  on  an  abiding  faith  in 
God,  whose  law  they  were  trying  to  obey.     I  am 


THE    RESULTS.  $7 

not  sure  that  I  heard  any  man  say  so  while  I  was 
in  Hampton,  but  when  I  look  back  upon  their 
life,  or  what  people  are  pleased  to  call  their 
experiment,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  that 
experiment  was  so  hazardous,  for  I  always  re- 
member who  said  that,  if  any  community  of 
brethren  would  trust  first  the  kingdom  of  God 
and  His  righteousness,  all  the  little  things  of 
time,  for  which  petty  men  are  selfishly  anxious, 
will  certainly  be  added  to  the  endeavor  of  that 
community. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE    STORE. 


I  DID  not  like  to  hang  about  the  counting- 
room  for  an  unreasonable  length  of  time,  and 
yet  I  was  so  much  interested  in  what  I  saw  at 
Hampton  that  I  did  not  abridge  my  visit.  As 
I  have  intimated,  I  could  occupy  myself  in  the 
woods  and  by  the  brooks,  but  I  also  found  that 
I  became  acquainted  among  the  workmen  and 
their  wives  and  children  ;  and  bearing  in  mind  all 
along  the  object  of  my  visit,  I  followed  up  such 
acquaintances.  Travelling  as  long  as  I  had  been, 
there  was  one  and  another  matter  which  I  wanted 
to  refit  in  my  little  luggage,  and  so  I  went  into 
the  "store"  once  and  again  for  my  purchases. 
It  is  the  standing  miracle  of  a  place  like  this, 
when  it  is  well  kept,  that  the  clerk  is  able  to 
supply  you  with  everything  you  need,  from  a 
heron's  wing  to  a  hand-saw.  I  found  that  they 
could  fit  my  watch  with  a  new  crystal  just  as 
readily  as  I  found  that  they  could  sell  me  hooks 
and  flies  of  the  last  London  patterns.  Some- 
times the  store  was  wholly  empty,  and  I  was 
the  only  customer.     Sometimes,  on  the  other 


THE    STORE.  59 

hand,  there  would  be  twenty  or  thirty  people 
there,  almost  always  women,  for  I  observed  that 
the  women  seemed  to  be  the  purse-holders  and 
were  intrusted  with  the  buying  and  selling  of 
this  community.  I  stored  up  many  questions 
to  put  to  Spinner  about  the  mechanism  by  which 
these  results  were  obtained,  and  one  afternoon, 
as  we  were  driving  together,  I  brought  them  all 
out,  and  made  him  answer  them  all  together. 

"  I  see  you  have  got  on  quite  a  central  affair," 
he  said.  "  I  shall  make  but  a  blundering  story 
of  it,  for  indeed  the  system  is  one  we  have  hit 
upon  from  hand  to  mouth,  if  indeed  it  be  a  sys- 
tem yet,  and  yet  I  think  it  is  beginning  to  work 
well. 

"  When  I  came  up  here  first  with  Workman,  I 
said  to  him  that  whatever  else  we  did,  in  our  new 
capacity  as  manufacturers,  we  would  wash  our 
hands  of  'store-pay,'  with  all  its  complications, 
jealousies,  and  iniquities.  You  can  see  yourself 
that  there  is  a  great  temptation  for  a  man  who 
comes  into  a  new  neighborhood,  actually  cuts 
down  trees  and  builds  houses  for  a  community, 
to  take  upon  himself  the  maintenance  of  the 
country  store.  It  is  very  easy  to  persuade  such 
a  man  that  it  is  his  duty  to  do  so  ;  that  he  should 
keep  his  workmen  from  being  cheated  ;  and,  in 
four  cases  out  of  five,  it  is  very  probable  that  he 
does.      Still  the  thing  is  false  in  theory.     Either 


60  HOW    TIIKY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON, 

a  man  is  a  manufacturer  or  he  is  a  tradesman. 
If  he  is  a  manufacturer,  he  is,  so  far  forth,  not 
a  tradesman,  and  if  he  is  a  tradesman,  he  is,  so 
far  forth,  not  a  manufacturer.  Precisely  as  the 
head  of  a  factory  had  better  not  be  the  leader 
of  a  military  band,  or  as  he  had  better  not  be 
a  publisher  of  school-books,  he  had  better  not  be 
the  man  to  keep  a  country  store.  At  least,  that 
was  what  I  said  to  Workman,  and  what  Work- 
man said  to  me.  We  had  seen  endless  jealousies 
among  workmen  because  they  supposed  their 
employers  were  cheating  them  in  this  way,  and 
he  said  that,  in  our  model  town  here,  this  diffi- 
culty should  not  exist.  I  do  not  think  we  gave 
much  thought  as  to  what  should  come  in  its 
place ;  I  suppose  we  were  too  easy  about  that, 
and  imagined  that  it  was  one  of  those  things 
which  would  take  care  of  itself.  In  which  easi- 
ness of  ours,  however,  we  were  much  mistaken, 
for  the  thing  has  given  us  as  much  difficulty  as 
anything  has  given  us  which  we  have  had  to 
handle  here.  It  has  given  us  the  more  difficulty 
because  we  are  what  you  see,  —  the  only  ele- 
ment of  life  here ;  there  is  absolutely  nothing 
but  what  we  bring  here,  which  divides  this  place 
from  such  a  wilderness  as  you  saw  yesterday 
when  you  were  fishing  above  Jotham's  Ledge. 

"  We  both  saw,  when  we  looked  at  the  prop- 
erty we  had  bought,  that  there  was  a  building 


THE    STORE.  6l 

for  a  store,  which  the  old  company  had  carried 
on.  Its  reputation  was  of  the  worst.  They  had 
paid  their  workmen  in  orders  on  the  store,  and, 
rightly  or  not,  the  workmen  thought  that  these 
orders  had  been  the  means  of  endless  cheating. 
When  we  began  to  talk  with  men  about  coming 
up,  the  natural  question  was  where  they  were  to 
do  their  marketing,  and  how  they  were  to  buy 
their  groceries,  and  so  on.  This  question  we 
could  only  answer  by  the  proud  statement  that 
there  was  to  be  no  store-pay,  —  that  though  we 
did  not  pay  much  we  should  pay  cash,  and  that 
they  might  buy  where  they  chose.  This  pleased 
the  workmen  very  much,  till  they  found  that 
buying  where  they  chose  meant  going  down  to 
Went  worth  or  going  down  to  Whitby's.  And 
before  long,  there  came  a  drummer  up  here,  who 
saw  we  had  an  empty  store,  and  asked  if  we  did 
not  want  to  have  a  store  up  here,  and  we  said 
we  did.  Before  a  week  was  over,  he  communi- 
cated with  his  employers,  and  they  had  sent  up 
a  clerk  who  had  prospected,  and  we  had  a  store 
established  here,  purely  on  Adam  Smith's  prin- 
ciple, that  the  demand  created  the  supply.  The 
man  hung  out  a  big  sign,  and  his  goods  began 
to  come  in. 

"  I  found  very  soon  that  the  people  disliked 
him  and  his  quite  as  much  as  the  people  before 
them  disliked  the  store-pay  of  their  employers. 


62  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

Naturally  enough,  his  principals  pushed  off  on 
us  what  they  could  not  sell  at  home,  and,  in  par- 
ticular, they  pushed  off  on  us  the  wares,  such  as 
they  were,  of  which  they  were  special  agents. 
The  boys  laughed  very  much  because  there  was 
an  immense  display  of  canned  tomatoes  and 
canned  corn  and  other  such  stuff,  and  they  said 
they  were  expected  to  live  on  canned  vegetables 
that  were  ten  years  old.  Somebody  would  take 
the  cars  down  to  Wentworth,  and  the  next  day 
would  have  his  groceries  sent  over  the  road  here, 
for  a  quarter  dollar,  and  then  would  brag  to  the 
others  about  how  much  he  had  saved  by  his  lit- 
tle journey.  So  they  very  soon  starv^ed  that  man 
out.  After  him,  the  Wentworth  people  tried  to 
establish  a  branch  here,  but  on  the  whole  they 
gave  that  up.  It  was  better  for  them,  though 
it  was  not  so  well  for  us,  to  have  our  men  send 
their  wives  ovei"  the  road  and  do  their  shopping 
at  their  headquarters  establishment,  than  it 
was  to  be  keeping  a  couple  of  clerks  alive  here 
through  the  machinery  of  a  separate  store. 

"  It  happened  that  at  that  time  George  Hol- 
yoake  was  in  the  country.  I  do  not  think  his 
message  was  introducing  the  Rochdale  system 
here,  but  I  knew  he  knew  all  about  it,  and  I  sent 
to  him  and  asked  him  if  he  would  come  and  see 
us  in  the  course  of  his  travels.  So  it  was  that 
our  people  had  a  chance  to  hear  him  talk  one 


THE    STORE.  63 

night,  and  he  was  good  enough  to  give  them  an 
off-hand  talk  on  the  working  of  the  Rochdale 
system,  and  said  something  as  to  the  reason  why 
it  had  not  introduced  itself  more  fully  in  America. 
The  reason  is,  in  brief,  that  our  people  like  to 
move  from  place  to  place  as  much  as  they  do, 
and  the  Rochdale  plan  really  rests,  though  I 
hardly  think  the  Englishmen  know  it,  on  the 
understanding  that  the  more  intelligent  work- 
men in  a  mill  stay  by  the'mill  from  the  time  they 
are  born  till  the  time  they  die.  At  the  bottom  of 
his  boots,  the  Englishman  does  not  like  to  move 
from  place  to  place  with  his  family ;  while  at 
the  bottom  of  his  boots  an  American  does. 
However,  we  had  had  a  great  deal  of  trouble 
from  the  supply  and  demand  system,  and  Work- 
man himself  and  some  other  of  the  more  intelli- 
gent men  were  well  disposed  to  try  the  Rochdale 
system,  as  Holyoake  explained  it  to  us.  Mark 
my  words.  You  are  going  from  place  to  place 
in  America,  and  you  hear  a  great  deal  of  talk 
about  co-operation  in  trade ;  but  I  tell  you  that 
the  man  is  a  fool  who  thinks  he  knows  more 
about  the  principles  of  co-operation  than  these 
hard-headed  Englishmen  have  found  out  in  the 
course  of  seventy-five  years  of  every  kind  of  ex- 
perience. They  do  not  theorize  a  great  deal  in 
England,  but  they  do  know  facts  ;  and  the  Roch- 
dale system,  which  is  a  difficult  system  to  ex- 


64  HOW    TIli:V    LIVED    IX    HAMPTON. 

pkiin,  has  come  into  being  from  the  observation 
of  the  failure  of  more  systems  than  were  ever 
tried  in  America.  So  lar  as  I  have  seen,  the 
e.xperiments  of  co-operations  in  trade  in  America 
have  failed  very  steadily,  because  in  every  in- 
stance there  was  a  man  who  was  more  or  less  a 
crank,  who  founded  the  store,  or  whatever  he 
called  it,  and  he  was  determined  to  try  his  own 
system.  Now  the  Rochdale  system  is  not  any 
man's  system  in  particular ;  it  is  the  result  of  a 
great  many  failures  and  some  successes,  and  the 
fact  that  it  works  as  well  as  it  does  in  England 
is  a  certain  and  strong  argument  in  its  favor." 

I  said  to  Spinner  that  I  ought  to  know  what 
the  Rochdale  system  was,  but  that  I  did  not, 
and  asked  him  if  there  was  any  brief  statement 
of  it.  He  said  "  Oh  yes  !  "  and  he  telephoned  to 
the  store  to  ask  them  to  send  over  to  me  one  of 
their  little  reports  which  had  an  account  of  the 
system  as  they  meant  to  apply  it ;  and  I  will 
print  it  in  the  form  in  which  they  gave  it  to  me 
at  the  end  of  this  chapter. 


"The  up  shot  of  it  all  is,"  said  Spinner,  "that 
the  store  is  well  kept  and  not  badly  kept.  Old 
Randolph  was  right  when  he  said  that  there  was 
no  manure  like  the  foot  of  the  owner.  They 
have  turned  out  a  good  many  clerks,  and  a  good 


THE   STORE.  65 

many  have  resigned  because  they  wanted  to  turn 
them  out,  but  I  am  disposed  to  think  that  those 
young  fellows  they  liave  there  now  understand 
the  business  quite  as  well  as  if  they  had  been 
sent  up  from  New  York  for  the  purpose.  I 
know  very  well  that  the  two  young  women  who 
kept  the  accounts  and  write  the  letters  under- 
stand the  business  a  great  deal  better  than  most 
of  the  people  I  see  in  similar  capacities,  when  I 
am  in  Broadway.  Here  is  something  gained  at 
the  beginning.  In  the  second  place,  nobody  can 
complain  ;  or,  if  he  does  complain,  he  carries  his 
complaints  where  he  ought  to  carry  them,  in- 
stead of  bringing  them  to  me  or  to  you  or  to 
Workman  or  to  anybody  else  who  has  nothing  to 
do  with  it.  What  do  I  care  whether  the  '  boiled 
shirt '  which  one  of  my  pickers  buys  is  made 
according  to  the  last  London  fashion  or  not .''  I 
would  not  be  bothered  with  such  things,  —  and 
as  this  thing  works  I  am  not  bothered  with  it. 
The  man  who  buys  the  shirt  is  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent the  man  who  sells  the  shirt.  At  all  events, 
if  the  person  who  selected  the  shirt  has  selected 
it  wrong,  it  is  the  fault  of  the  buyer,  who  ought 
to  have  been  at  the  quarterly  meeting  and  chosen 
somebody  else  in  the  directory.  You  can  hardly 
understand,  living  as  you  do,  what  a  relief  it  is 
to  be  relieved  from  all  this  nonsense. 

"Then,  in  general,  all  these  co-operative  shops 


66        ,      now    TIIEY    LIVED    IN'    HAMl'TON. 

have  the  great  advantage  that  they  have  no  need 
whatever  to  advertise  their  wares  or  their  exist- 
ence. You  v/ill  find  that  the  largest  co-opera- 
tive shops  in  England  hardly  advertise  at  all. 
Every  purchaser  is  interested  in  making  some- 
body else  purchase,  and  he  is  'touting,'  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  for  the  shop  all  the 
time.  When  anybody  comes  to  make  a  visit 
here, — you,  for  instance, — the  visitor  goes 
to  the  store  and  buys  there.  And  when  you 
bought  a  watch  key  the  other  day  it  was  to  the 
advantage  of  every  man  in  this  village  that  you 
bought  it  here  instead  of  buying  it  in  New  Ha- 
ven. If  you  only  take  into  account  the  relief  to 
you  that  you  do  not  see  the  long  bragging  ad- 
vertisements in  the  village  newspaper,  it  is  a 
good  deal ;  but  really  these  people  have  no  occa- 
sion whatever  to  advertise. 

"  Of  course  they  have  no  occasion  whatever  to 
keep  adulterated  goods,  or  to  keep  anything 
which  is  not  what  it  pretends  to  be.  Why 
should  a  man  cheat  himself  .■'  Why  should  the 
person  who  is  going  to  buy  the  goods  send  an 
agent  down  to  New  York  to  buy  pickles  which 
are  artificially  stained,  or  coffee  which  has  been 
made  out  of  paste,  or  anything  else  which  is  not 
what  it  pretends  to  be .''  You  are  pleased  to 
compliment  our  shop  ;  really,  this  freedom  from 
all  temptation  to  buy  inferior  articles  has  a  great 


THE    STORE.  6^ 

deal  to  do  with  the  merit  of  what  you  have 
seen. 

"  Whether  such  a  system  as  I  have  described 
to  you  can  be  made  to  succeed  in  America  on  a 
scale  larger  than  that  upon  which  we  are  trying, 
it  is  more  doubtful.  But  I  am  quite  clear  about 
this,  —  that  if  some  man  who  knows  this  coun- 
try well,  and  knows  the  habit  of  our  working- 
men,  will  give  the  same  pains  to  this  subject 
here  that  Holyoake  has  done  in  England,  we 
shall  get  an  American  adaptation  of  the  Roch- 
dale plan  which  will  answer  our  purpose.  The 
adaptation  which  we  have  made  here  may  not 
be  such  as  they  would  need  somewhere  else. 
What  we  have  done  is  to  give  rather  more  cap- 
ital stock  to  the  undertaking  in  the  beginning 
than  could  be  supplied  by  the  simple  co-opera- 
tive principle.  Holyoake  would  have  rebuked 
us  for  this,  I  think,  but  it  was  really  necessary 
in  the  conditions  in  which  we  were.  I  hope  as 
heartily  as  he  would  do,  that  gradually  we  may 
have  the  affair  more  precisely  on  the  English 
basis,  but  that  is  still  a  matter  for  experiment 
with  us.  I  say  this  because  I  do  not,  as  I  have 
said,  care  to  vary  much  from  the  only  successful 
experiment  of  this  sort  which  has  been  tried  in 
the  world. 

"  I  had  been  greatly  impressed  by  what  George 
Holyoake  says  in  all  his  books  of  the  desirable- 


68  now    TIIF-V    LIVKD    IN    HAMPTON. 

ness  of  each  store  maintaining,  as  a  store,  its 
reading-room  and  other  methods  of  instruction. 
There  was  a  very  decent  room  or  hall  in  the  sec- 
ond story  of  the  store  building,  which  we  had 
turned  over  to  them ;  and,  after  communication 
with  Mr.  Nourse,  I  agreed  to  let  that  room  go 
without  any  additional  rent,  and  to  be  at  the 
cost  of  fitting  it  up  with  tables  and  chairs,  for  a 
reading-room.  It  serves,  of  course,  for  the  busi- 
ness meetings  of  the  proprietors  of  the  store, 
and  the  men  bring  to  it  such  newspapers,  mag- 
azines, and  books  as  they  care  to  have  there. 
They  are  permitted  to  smoke  there,  and  it  be- 
comes a  very  respectable  club-room  for  the  vil- 
lage. After  a  while,  the  women  complained  that, 
although  they  were  often  stockholders  in  the 
store,  they  could  not  stay  where  the  men  were 
smoking  ;  and  it  ended  in  my  giving  the  use  of 
another  room,  which  was  a  sort  of  back  build- 
ing, which  was  fitted  up  for  a  general  reading- 
room,  as  it  was  called,  where  smoking  was  pro- 
hibited. I  think,  on  the  whole,  this  has  proved 
to  be  the  more  popular  room  of  the  two,  and 
there  is  little  competition  between  them  as  to 
which  shall  get  the  latest  magazines  and  the 
best,  and  the  presence  of  the  women  adds  the 
element  of  attractiveness  to  the  place,  which,  to  a 
considerable  extent,  competes  with  the  attraction 
of  the  pipes  and  the  freer  rules  of  the  original 


THE    STORE.  69 

room.  All  this  you  will  sec  if  you  go  through 
the  store  ;  or,  if  you  look  at  the  accounts,  you 
will  see  that  something  —  not  much  —  is  spent 
for  the  library  and  reading-room  in  every  quar- 
terly distribution.  When  they  are  prosperous, 
they  are  likely  to  make  rather  a  larger  distribu- 
tion ;  then  when  they  are  poor  they  appropriate 
nothing  at  all ;  in  fact,  this  goes  more  or  less  by 
fancy,  according  as  the  drift  of  a  meeting  is  led 
by  a  parsimonious  member  or  by  one  who  has 
more  liberal  views." 

I  took  an  early  opportunity,  therefore,  to  go 
into  the  store  in  the  forenoon,  after  the  women 
had  gone  away.  There  was  no  one  in  when  I 
entered,  but,  at  the  sound  of  my  entrance,  Mr. 
Ledger,  the  storekeeper,  appeared  from  a  room 
behind,  which,  as  I  afterwards  found,  was  the 
reading-room. 

I  told  him  that  people  spoke  to  me  about 
the  Rochdale  system  as  if  of  course  everybody 
understood  it,  somewhat  as  people  speak  about 
the  Christian  religion  as  if  everybody  understood 
that.  But  I  said  I  had  found  a  great  many  people 
talk  about  the  Rochdale  system  who  knew  noth- 
ing about  it,  and  that  f  was  willing  to  confess 
that,  though  I  had  bought  coats  and  hats  and 
slippers  and  portfolios  at  the  co-operative  store 
in  London,  I  did  not  know  why  they  were  cheap, 
and  indeed,  I  hardly  knew  why  I  went  there. 


JO  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

I  found  Mr.  Ledger  was  an  enthusiast  in  the 
matter,  and  was  only  too  glad  to  have  a  hearer 
to  whom  he  coukl  talk  for  one  of  the  quiet  hours 
of  the  middle  of  the  day,  when  he  hardly  had 
any  customers.  I  observed  that  there  was  a 
boy,  who  attended  to  the  one  or  two  children 
who  did  drop  in  for  some  trifling  purchase. 

He  said  that  the  idea  of  co-operation  in  the 
purchasing  of  necessary  articles  was,  as  I  knew, 
an  idea  which  had  been  experimented  upon,  no- 
body knew  how  far  back.  "  Nothing  is  easier," 
he  said,  "than  for  a  dozen  families  to  think  they 
will  buy  their  coal  together  at  wholesale,  will 
divide  it  in  the  quantities  they  want,  and  so 
make  the  profit  which  would  ordinarily  go  to  the 
retail  dealer  who  keeps  a  coal  yard.  But  practi- 
cally, you  know  such  schemes  as  that  never  con- 
tinue many  years.  There  are  so  many  con- 
veniences in  the  coal  yard,  that  after  all  you  go 
back  to  them,  and  persuade  yourself  that  the 
profit  you  made  was  not  worth  the  trouble.  I 
remember  that  when  I  lived  in  Boston  I  could 
go  down  to  a  certain  point,  perfectly  well  known, 
at  half-past  five  in  the  morning,  and  I  could  buy 
my  fresh  fish  there,  at  the  rate  of  about  a  cent 
and  a  half  a  pound.  But  I  never  did  go  there. 
I  went  to  a  fish  dealer,  who  made  me  pay  any- 
where between  ten  cents  and  twenty  cents  a 
pound.     I  did  not  want  more  than  five  or  six 


THE    STORE.  7I 

pounds  of  fish,  and  it  was  really  not  worth  the 
while  for  me  to  get  up,  perhaps  before  daylight, 
go  out  to  the  place  where  fish  was  sold  at  whole- 
sale, and  bring  it  back.  In  that  story  is  told 
the  whole  of  the  reason  why  we  pay  so  much  as 
we  do  for  articles  at  retail,  and  why,  on  the  whole, 
it  is  an  advantage  for  us  to  pay  it.  I  suppose 
there  is  no  profit  more  fairly  made  than  the  profit 
of  the  retailing  middleman,  much  abused  as  he 
always  is.  However,  as  I  said  before,  nobody 
can  say  how  far  back  experiments  of  groups  of 
people  buying  to  please  themselves  have  been 
tried.  Sometimes  it  has  been  tried  successfully 
for  a  good  many  years,  but  nothing  ever  came 
of  it. 

"  Now  the  peculiarity  of  the  Rochdale  system, 
which  has  made  it  succeed  and  grow,  is  this. 
The  more  a  man  purchases,  and  the  more  he  can 
make  other  people  purchase,  the  larger  is  his  in- 
terest in  the  concern,  and  the  larger  his  profit. 
If  ten  men  should  subscribe  five  hundred  dollars 
apiece,  to  make  five  thousand  dollars  capital  with 
which  to  carry  on  this  store,  they  would  have, 
of  course,  an  equal  interest  in  the  profits  of  the 
store.  They  would  try,  as  they  could,  to  induce 
as  many  people  to  come  there  and  trade.  But 
there  would  be  only  these  ten  people  who  had 
a  personal  interest  in  the  success  of  the  store. 

"If,   on    the    other  hand,  every  person  who 


72  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

deals  with  us  is  personally  interested  in  making 
the  store  successful,  why,  every  one  of  them  will 
bring  in  more  customers ;  every  one  of  them  will 
buy  with  us^  rather  than  go  down  to  Wentworth 
or  to  New  Haven  to  buy ;  every  one  of  them  will 
advertise  us  in  whatever  way  he  can.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  justice,  or,  I  think,  as  a  matter  of  religion, 
the  people  who  really  sustain  the  store  by  buying 
goods  at  it,  are  the  people  who  ought  to  make 
the  profit  if  there  is  any  profit  to  be  made. 
It  is  exactly  like  a  mutual  life  insurance  com- 
pany, you  see.  Supposing  the  year  is  a  healthy 
year,  ought  not  the  people  to  have  the  benefit 
whose  lives  are  insured  .''  or,  if  is  an  unhealthy 
year,  ought  they  not  to  pay  for  the  unhealthi- 
ness  ?  Just  in  the  same  way,  if,  for  any  reason, 
the  store  is  a  profitable  store,  I  think,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  Christian  justice,  the  people  who  deal  at 
the  store  ought  to  have  the  advantage.  What 
does  a  profitable  year  mean  .''  It  means  that  the 
price  which  has  been  put  on  the  retail  of  the 
goods  was  rather  higher  than  the  necessities  of 
the  business  demanded.  In  other  words,  the  man 
who  bought  raisins  and  sugar  here  paid  us  rather 
more  than  we  need  have  asked  him.  If  he  paid 
us  more,  why  should  not  we  give  it  back  to  him, 
if  we  mean  to  deal  —  as,  of  course,  we  do  mean 
to  deal  —  on  terms  coming  as  near  to  absolute 
justice  as  is  possible  in  human  affairs  .'' 


THE    STORE.  73 

"  But  this,  you  will  say,  is  theoretical.  Taking 
the  thing  practically,  here  am  I,  managing  this 
store.  I  was  brought  up  to  this  sort  of  business. 
I  have  owned  a  store,  and  I  have  been  a  clerk  in 
a  store.  To  be  an  owner  means  that  I  have  come 
out  at  the  end  of  the  year  not  knowing  how  I 
was  to  meet  my  notes  in  February.  This  on  the 
one  hand  ;  on  the  other  hand,  I  have  been  paid 
a  salary,  once  a  week  or  once  a  month,  from  the 
time  when  I  had  three  dollars  a  week,  for  sweep- 
ing out  a  store,  to  the  time  when  I  had  twenty- 
five  hundred  dollars,  because  I  was  the  best 
person  they  could  employ  at  Pickering  yonder. 
Now,  I  am  working  here  on  a  salary.  I  am  one 
of  the  kind  of  men  that  like  to  work  on  a  salary. 
Some  men  do,  and  some  men  don't ;  but  after 
one  had  had  experience  of  the  ups  and  downs 
—  the  good  fortune  and  bad  fortune  —  of  what 
is  called  business  life,  if  he  is  such  a  person  as  I 
am  he  likes  the  regularity  of  a  paid  salary.  A 
paid  salary  I  have  here.  Beside  that,  I  own  some 
stock  in  this  store  ;  on  that  stock  I  draw  my  divi- 
dends. Beside  that,  I  buy  almost  everything  I 
need  for  my  family  here.  I  buy  just  as  any  other 
customer  would  buy,  and,  according  to  the  amount 
of  my  purchases  in  a  year,  I  am  also  entitled  to  a 
dividend." 

By  this  time  I  was  a  little  confused,  and  I  said 
as  much  to  Mr.  Ledger.   He  laughed,  and  said  :  — 


74  HOW    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

"The  whole  thing  is  so  simple  to  us  that  we 
take  it  for  granted  that  everybody  will  under- 
stand it  at  the  first  blush.  But  if  you  will  study 
the  little  book  of  directions  of  ours,  and  then 
come  in  and  see  me  to-morrow,  I  will  try  to  make 
it  clear  to  you." 

Accordingly  I  took  his  book  of  directions, 
which  I  copy  here  for  the  benefit  of  people  as 
little  informed  as  I  was. 

Hampton  Co-operative  Store. 

For  the  information  of  members,  of  purchas- 
ers, and  of  all  concerned,  the  following  state- 
ment is  printed,  copied  from  distinguished  writ- 
ers on  the  subject  of  co-operation.  It  will  show 
the  principles  on  which  the  store  is  conducted. 

Persons  who  wish  more  detailed  information 
will  receive  a  copy  of  the  Regulations  of  the 
Store,  by  application  to  Mr.  Ledger,  at  the  store 
itself. 

Principles   of  Co-operative  Trade. 
In  a  properly  constituted  store  the  funds  are 
disposed  of  quarterly  in  seven  ways  :  — 

1.  Rent,  and  expenses  of  management. 

2.  Interest  due  on  all  loans. 

3.  An  amount  equal  to  ten  per  cent  of  the 
value  of  the  fixed  stock,  set  apart  to  cover  its 
annual  reduction  in  value,  owing  to  wear  and 
tear. 


THE    STORE,  75 

4.  Dividends  on  subscribed  capital  of  mem- 
bers. 

5.  Such  sum  as  may  be  required  tor  extension 
of  business. 

6.  Two  and  one  half  per  cent  of  the  remain- 
ing profit,  after  all  the  above  items  are  provided 
for,  to  be  appHed  to  educational  purposes. 

7.  The  residue,  and  that  only,  is  then  divided 
among  all  the  persons  employed,  and  members 
of  the  store,  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of  their 
wages,  or  of  their  respective  purchases  during 
the  quarter,  varying  from  six  per  cent  to  ten. 

The  peculiar  distinction  of  a  co-operative 
store  is  that  a  fixed  interest  is  divided  upon  cap- 
ital, say  five  per  cent  upon  the  shares  each  mem- 
ber holds,  and  then  all  net  profits  are  divided  to 
the  trade  upon  the  business  each  member  has 
done. 

No  credit  is  allowed,  of  any  sort,  to  any  pur- 
chaser. The  store  buys  for  cash,  and  its  mem- 
bers have  the  advantage  of  such  purchase.  It 
therefore  sells  for  cash,  and  for  cash  only. 


To  secure  the  necessary  capital  for  making  a 
store  which  shall  meet  the  needs  of  Hampton, 
the  first  twenty  dollars  of  profit  earned  by  any 
purchaser  will  be  charged  to  his  credit,  as  one 


"J^  now    TIIKY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

share  of  his  capital.  After  he  is  the  owner  of 
one  share  of  capital,  he  will  receive  five  per  cent 
annual  dividend  on  that  share,  and  his  profits 
will  be  paid  to  him  in  cash  at  the  cjuarterly  set- 
tlements. 

The  store  cannot  keep  open  accounts  with 
persons  who  are  not  regular  customers.  Unless 
purchases  to  the  amount  of  one  dollar  are  made 
in  each  quarter,  the  purchaser  loses  all  right  to 
a  dividend. 

The  prices  of  the  store  will  be  as  low  as  the 
best  stores  in  the  neighborhood.  The  quality  of 
goods  will  always  be  what  it  is  represented. 
We  have  no  motive  to  cheat  ourselves,  and,  as 
the  purchasers  are  the  same  persons  who  sell 
the  goods,  we  have  no  motive  to  tell  ourselves 
lies. 

We  spend  nothing  for  advertising.  If  you 
wish  to  increase  the  business  of  the  store,  tell 
your  neighbors  the  truth  about  it,  and  bring  them 
to  see. 

Rules  &  Regulations. 

1.  Every  person  above  the  age  of  14,  residing  in 
this  town,  may  become  a  member  of  the  co-opera- 
tive store,  on  the  payment  of  twenty-five  cents. 

2.  This  money  will  be  placed  to  his  credit. 


THE    STORE.  "JJ 

3.  Each  share  of  the  company  costs  twenty 
dollars.  So  soon  as  members  have  paid  for  one 
share,  they  are  privileged  to  attend  quarterly, 
annual,  and  social  meetings.  Members  are  urged 
to  complete  the  payment  for  their  shares  as  soon 
as  possible. 

4.  For  the  amount  of  all  purchases  made  at 
one  time,  the  purchaser,  if  a  member,  will  receive 
a  metal  check,  stamped  with  figures  indicating 
the  amount  of  his  purchase.  He  must  present 
these  checks.  They  are  the  only  vouchers  rec- 
ognized for  his  purchases. 

5.  When  he  presents  these  checks,  once  a 
quarter,  the  cashier  will  give  him  a  statement, 
made  from  them,  of  the  amount  of  his  purchases, 

6.  He  is  entitled  to  a  dividend  in  proportion 
to  the  amount  he  has  bought.  Thus,  if  he  has 
bought  one  hundredth  part  of  all  the  shop  has 
sold,  he  is  entitled  to  one  hundredth  part  of  all 
its  profits. 

7.  Until  his  first  share  is  paid  for,  his  divi- 
dends are  passed  to  his  credit,  in  payment  for 
that  share.  But  it  is  a  great  convenience  to  the 
store  for  members  to  pay  in  cash  for  their  first 
shares,  at  once. 

8.  On  each  share,  thus  paid  for,  he  will  be 
paid  quarterly  a  dividend  of  one  and  a  quarter 
per  cent,  — amounting  to  five  per  cent  in  a  year. 

9.  The  receipts  of  the  store  will  be  divided 


7$  HOW    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

quarterly,  after  the  expenses  have  all  been  met, 
including  rent,  cost  of  management,  an  allowance 
for  depreciation  of  the  goods  and  furniture,  and 
six  per  cent  interest  on  capital.  The  residue 
will  be  divided  among  the  purchasers. 

lo.  Purchasers  who  have  not  become  mem- 
bers of  the  society  will  receive  only  half  the 
dividend  to  which  they  would  be  entitled  had 
they  joined  the  society.  And  no  person  will 
receive  any  dividend  unless  his  purchases  have 
amounted  to  the  sum  of  one  dollar  at  one  time. 


Officers. 

1.  The  officers  of  the  society  are  a  President, 
five  Directors,  a  Secretary,  and  a  Treasurer. 

2.  They  make  their  own  rules. 

3.  They  appoint  the  Storekeeper  and  his 
Clerks. 

4.  They  are  responsible  for  all  purchases,  and 
for  the  careful  management  of  the  property. 

5.  The  books  of  the  society  are  open  to  the 
inspection  of  any  member,  on  the  approval  of  a 
majority  of  the  whole  Board  of  Management. 


The  Quarterly  Meetings  are  held  on  the  after- 
noon of  Tuesday  after  the  second  Monday  of 
February,  May,  August,  and  November.  The 
annual  meeting  is  held  in  November,  at  such  a 


THE    STORE.  79 

time  as  may  be  ordered  at  the  quarterly  meeting 
of  that  month. 


And  when  I  left  Hampton,  Mr.  Ledger,  know- 
ing that  I  had  some  thoughts  of  establishing  a 
co-operative  store  at  Pigotsville,  where  I  had  an 
interest,  gave  me  these  cautions  to  officers, 
which  he  had  dio:ested  from  the  English  writers. 


The  Management  :  Officers  and  Employees, 
THEIR  Appointment  and  Duties. 

I.  TJie  Committee  and  Officers.  —  There  is 
almost  always  a  chairman  and  secretary,  some- 
times a  treasurer,  and  a  varying  number  of 
committeemen. 

Election. — The  Chairman  or  President  of  the 
society  is  generally  chosen  by  the  members  in 
quarterly  meeting,  sometimes  by  the  committee 
from  among  themselves.  The  Secretary,  if  a 
paid  servant,  employed  for  accounts  and  other 
matters  of  business,  will  be,  and  in  the  opinion 
of  most  Co-operators  certainly  ought  to  be,  ap- 
pointed or  dismissed  by  the  committee.  If  the 
secretary  is  only  a  minute  secretary  for  commit- 
tee-meetings, &c.,  he  will  be  one  of  the  commit- 
tee, and  will  be  appointed  by  them,  or  might  be 
elected,  if  desirable,  in  general  meeting ;  and  in 


So  now    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

this  case,  all  the  other  duties  are  undertaken 
by  a  paid  official,  whether  general  manager, 
cashier,  or  otherwise.  The  Treasurer  may  be 
chosen  in  either  way.  If  there  is  no  treasurer, 
the  secretary  will  discharge  his  duties.  In  the 
opinion  of  some  Co-operators,  a  treasurer  is  not 
necessary. 

Auditors.  —  It  is  most  important  that  good 
men  should  be  selected.  They  ought  to  re- 
member what  a  grave  responsibility  rests  upon 
them  in  signing  balance  sheets.  They  should 
be  careful  of  their  own  reputation,  and  not 
run  risks  or  try  to  screen  the  committee. 
They  ought  to  have  a  full  knowledge  of  ac- 
counts, which  is  not  always  found. 

Payment.  —  In  most  societies  committee-men 
are  paid  for  their  attendance  at  the  weekly  com- 
mittee ;  but  it  is  most  desirable,  in  fixing  the 
scale  of  payment,  to  avoid  the  likelihood  of 
men  trying  to  get  on  to  the  committee  simply 
for  the  sake  of  the  fees.  This  is  a  danger  to  be 
carefully  watched  in  the  co-operative  movement. 
The  work  of  its  managing  men  (not  its  paid  of- 
ficials, to  whom  it  is  a  profession)  should  be 
that  of  volunteers,  who  are  repaid  in  modera- 
tion for  their  expense  of  time  and  trouble,  and 
who  will  withdraw  or  resign  their  position  at 
once,  without  a  moment's  hesitation  on  the 
score  of  money,  if  that  is  being  done  of  which 


THE    STORE.  81 

they  so  strongly  disapprove  that  they  believe 
this  to  be  the  right  course ;  otherwise  they  are 
not  independent,  and  may  tend  to  get  into  the 
hands  of  men  more  powerful  than  themselves, 
who  are  well  aware  they  will  not  resign  if  they 
can  possibly  help  it. 

The  Secretary  may  receive  some  additional 
fee  for  his  clerical  labors. 

Sub-committees.  —  In  most  societies  there  are 
sub-committees  to  give  special  attention  to  the 
various  departments  of  the  society  work,  —  one 
for  groceries,  another  for  bakery,  another  for 
butchery,  &c.  In  the  earlier  stages  of  a  so- 
ciety it  may  not  be  desirable,  but  later  on  it 
becomes  almost  a  necessity.  As  a  rule,  work- 
ingmen  committees  have  only  the  evenings 
free,  and  the  whole  committee  could  not  pos- 
sibly all  of  them  go  into  the  matters  requiring 
attention.  Subdivision  of  the  work  is  neces- 
sary. 

Duties  of  Coniniitteeuien  and  Officers. — The 
Chairman  should  have  firmness,  impartiality, 
coolness,  keenness  and  tact.  It  is  no  good 
having  a  chairman,  however  virtuous,  good- 
natured,  or  consistent,  if  he  cannot  keep  a 
meeting  in  order.  The  Secretary  should  be 
able  to  work  hard  and  continuously,  must  be 
well  up  in  figures,  and  must  write  well  and 
quickly.     A  bad  secretary  can  bring  a  society 


82  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

to  grief  very  quickly.  He  ought  not  to  try  to 
dictate  to  the  committee,  and,  whatever  his 
own  opinions,  ought  loyally  to  carry  out  their 
decisions.  In  a  committee  there  are  always 
likely  to  rise  up  rival  parties.  This  ought  to 
be  avoided  as  far  as  possible.  A  member 
should  firmly  state  his  opinion,  and  accept  a 
defeat  with  good  temper,  or,  if  the  matter  is 
serious,  resign.  He  ought  to  feel  himself  free 
to  resign,  if  necessary,  as  has  been  mentioned 
before.  Party  spirit  on  a  committee  is  to  be 
deplored.  The  members  should  not  send  hot- 
headed firebrands  into  office.  They  should 
send  steady-going,  able  men,  who  have  a  ca- 
pacity for  patient,  persistent  enthusiasm  that 
commands  success  and  is  not  afraid  of  diffi- 
culties. The  committee  should  aim  at  keep- 
ing the  confidence  of  their  members ;  should 
remember  that  the  constitution  of  the  society 
is  republican  ;  should  not  mind  criticism,  but 
welcome  it.  It  should  be  considered  a  golden 
rule  that  the  committee  should  never  unneces- 
sarily keep  anything  back  from  the  members, 
unless  its  being  known  is  likely  to  be  injuri- 
ous to  the  society.  Committees  should  desire 
publicity  and  criticism  of  any  kind  within  rea- 
sonable limits.  They  should  not  be  thin- 
skinned,  or  make  too  frequent  appeals  to  the 
forbearance   of   members.     Members   ought  to 


THE    STORE.  83 

have  the  moving  power  in  as  many  matters  as 
possible,  and  this  power  should  not  be  taken 
from  them. 

Publicity  and  frank  and  full  discussion  of  all 
matters  concerning  the  welfare  of  a  society  are 
essential  to  its  well-being.  Many  a  society  has 
come  to  a  bad  end  through  the  want  of  this. 
The  committee  should  never  be  jealous  of  ris- 
ing talent  among  the  members.  There  are 
plenty  of  outlets  for  activity ;  and,  perhaps 
more  than  anything  else,  what  is  needed  now, 
is  that  committees  should  encourage  young 
members  to  be  personally  interested  in  the 
fuller  and  higher  development  of  Co-operation 
in  many  different  ways.  A  great  deal  can  be 
done  in  the  way  of  training  up  good  and  loyal 
members  and  active  and  efficient  officers  in  a 
society  where  a  good  spirit  prevails,  and  where 
the  best  men  have  an  influence  such  as  they 
deserve. 

Servants  of  the  Society. — All  servants  of  the 
society  are  almost  invariably  appointed  and  dis- 
missed by  the  committee. 

TJie  Manager.  —  Upon  the  question  what 
kind  of  person  is  the  storekeeper,  manager, 
or  buyer,  depends,  to  a  very  large  extent,  the 
success  or  failure  of  the  society.  Is  he  to  be 
the  master  or  the  servant  of  the  committee  ? 
What  is  to  be  the  relation  between  them }    A 


84  HOW    TllliV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

manager  has  great  opportunities  of  influence 
tlirough  much  intercourse  with  the  members, 
and  he  can  use  it  well  or  badly.  Many  man- 
agers of  co-operative  stores  are  first-rate  men, 
and  zealous  Co-operators.  Yet  there  are  great 
temptations  to  managers  to  aim  at  personal 
power  rather  than  the  general  welfare  of  the 
society. 

Checks  on  Managers.  —  Some  societies  are 
content  with  a  guarantee  or  deposit  similar  to 
that  demanded  from  the  secretary  or  treasurer. 
Such  a  guarantee  merely  provides  against  cer- 
tain kinds  of  dishonesty.  It  does  not  provide 
against  waste. 

{a)  The  English  shops  have  advanced  so  far  in 
their  system  that  they  provide  for  what  they  call 
Leakage  Bonds.  To  aim  at  lessening  waste 
and  preventing  possible  fraud,  many  societies 
arrange  for  a  leakage  bond  or  agreement,  to  be 
signed  by  the  manager.  In  this  he  binds  him- 
self to  return  as  much  money  as  is  equal  to  the 
value  of  the  goods  intrusted  to  him,  subject  to 
a  deduction  for  leakage  {i.e.,  waste  and  loss  in 
weighing  out).  Opinions  differ  as  to  the  leak- 
age allowable,  and  it  depends  partly  on  how  the 
accounts  are  made  up ;  2d  or  yi  in  the  pound 
is  a  very  ordinary  average  allowance. 

{b)  Check  Systems.  —  There  are  many  ways  in 
which  a  fraudulent  manager  or  shopkeeper  can 


THE    STORE.  85 

cheat  a  society,  and  no  methods  can  obviate  this 
altogether.  At  the  same  time  it  is  very  impor- 
tant that  in  order  to  remove  temptation,  and 
keep  the  business  up  to  the  mark,  there  should 
be  a  check  system,  with  a  view  to  seeing  how  much 
cash  really  passes  through  the  manager's  hands. 

Let  it  be  understood  that  the  mere  having  of 
checks  or  tokens,  metal  or  otherwise,  as  explained 
before,  to  enable  members  to  claim  their  divi- 
dends at  the  end  of  the  quarter,  is  not  a  cJieck 
system  in  the  sense  of  being  a  check  upon  mana- 
gers and  shopmen.  You  may  or  must  have 
checks,  as  they  are  called,  to  give  to  members  ; 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  you  have  any  check 
on  your  manager,  or  that  the  committee  know 
whether  they  get  all  the  cash  which  is  paid  over 
the  counter.  For  instance,  non-members  who 
know  nothing  about  the  dividend  may  come  in, 
(but  add)  pay,  and  go  away  without  any  check, 
the  shopman  pocketing  the  money  and  not  being 
found  out.  It  has  been  found  also  that  with  the 
metal  checks  employees  may  pilfer  the  checks, 
and  their  friends  bring  them  in  and  claim  divi- 
dends at  the  end  of  the  quarter.  With  the  paper 
checks,  one  being  given  for  every  sale,  there  is 
some  security,  but  even  this  has  not  always 
worked  well. 

In  large  stores,  the  method  of  the  shopmen 
giving  the  customer  a  ticket,  who  takes  it  to  a 


86  HOW    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

boy,  who  gives  metal  checks  in  exchange  and 
registers  each  shopman's  sales,  has  been  found 
fairly  satisfactory.  For  the  whole  subject,  which 
is  a  difficult  one,  see  Manual  of  Checks,  pub- 
lished by  the  Central  Board.  Apparently,  the 
ideal  check  system  has  yet  to  be  discovered. 
Still,  it  may  be  said  generally  that  a  good  com- 
mittee can  soon  find  out  if  a  manager  is  doing 
really  well  or  not,  and  that,  as  in  so  many  other 
matters  of  management,  the  only  thing  to  be 
done  may  be  to  say  to  a  manager,  "  We  do  not 
charge  you  with  dishonesty,  but  simply  with 
want  of  managing  power.  Experience  shows 
every  day  in  every  kind  of  business,  that,  of  two 
men  with  the  best  intentions,  one  can  make  a 
good  profit  and  the  other  will  make  a  serious 
loss.  We  have  given  you  a  good  trial,  and  tried 
to  help  you.  We  propose  to  part  with  you  and 
take  another  manager." 

The  Employees.  —  The  shopmen,  baker's  men 
with  the  cart,  and  others  employed  by  the  store, 
will  be  appointed  by  the  committee,  who,  if  they 
are  wise,  will  give  their  managers  and  branch 
managers  a  good  deal  of  power  in  this  matter. 
Get  good  managers,  and  trust  them  in  minor 
matters ;  give  them  power  over  those  below 
them,  if  you  think  they  will  use  it  well ;  and 
while  always  willing  to  investigate  complaints, 
show  the  employees  that  you  do  trust  your  man- 


THE    STORE,  8^ 

ager.  If  the  committee  as  individuals  listen  to 
the  complaints  of  shopmen,  clerks  and  others, 
they  may  do  a  great  deal  of  harm.  Branch 
managers  should  be  made  as  far  as  possible  re- 
sponsible for  what  goes  on  at  the  branches,  and, 
if  possible,  should  have  a  pecuniary  interest  in 
the  success  of  the  branch. 

Bonus  to  Employees.  —  Many  societies  have 
begun  this  plan,  and  under  pressure  from  their 
members  have  given  it  up.  It  may  fairly  be 
said  that,  if  Co-operators  believe  in  the  principle 
of  workmen  having  a  pecuniary  interest  in  their 
work,  they  ought  to  apply  it  to  the  shopmen  in 
their  shops.  Many  Co-operators  show  by  their 
votes  in  meetings  and  by  their  practice  that  they 
do  not  believe  in  this  principle.  On  the  other 
hand,  many  do.  Some  committeemen  would 
gladly  apply  the  principle  if  they  could  prove  to 
their  members  that  a  real  saving  is  effected  by 
it.  If  it  is  to  be  conceded  as  an  abstract  prin- 
ciple of  justice,  not  many  societies  will  carry  it 
on  that  ground.  It  is  worth  considering,  whether 
the  plan  which  has  been  tried  in  some  societies, 
of  giving  a  bonus  on  wages,  at  the  same  rate  as 
the  dividend  declared  —  e.g.,  \s  6d  to  3^  in 
the  pound,  according  to  the  success  of  trade  in 
each  quarter,  is  not  a  mistake,  except  in  very 
small  stores.  Rather  it  would  seem  that  each 
small  group  of  employees  should  be  made  to  feel 


88  TUnV    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

a  tlircct  personal  interest  in  the  part  or  branch 
in  which  they  are  engaged.  Then  they  have 
much  more  chance  of  getting  something  by 
their  efforts,  than  they  have  as  individuals  of 
raising  the  general  dividend  for  the  whole  store 
\d  or  2(1  in  the  pound,  which  will  bring  them 
but  little  after  all.  Where  departmental  accounts 
are  kept,  it  ought  not  to  be  difficult.  If  societies 
and  committees  would  turn  their  attention  more 
fully  to  this  subject,  and  not  listen  to  isolated 
instances  of  failure,  it  is  probable  they  would 
find  that  there  is  a  good  deal  more  in  this  mat- 
ter of  profit-sharing  by  employees  than  has  yet 
been  found  out.  The  number  of  employees  em- 
ployed in  distributive  work  in  stores  is  about 
13,000.  Almost  all  societies  close  the  store  for 
one  half-holiday  in  the  week,  generally  not  on 
Saturdays.  In  addition  to  this  unusual  priv- 
ilege, the  hours  of  labor  are  usually  considerably 
less  than  the  hours  in  private  shops.  The  Sat- 
urday half -holiday  for  shops  was  largely  inaugu- 
rated by  Co-operators.  They  felt  that  shop- 
keepers had  as  much  right  to  the  holiday  as 
they  had.  For  rules  for  shopmen,  see  a  useful 
paper  at  the  end  of  Model  Book-keeping. 

Average  Working  Expenses. — These  vary  a 
good  deal :  in  some  stores,  they  are  as  high  as 
seven  and  one-half  per  cent  or  more,  in  some  be- 
low five  per  cent ;  but  a  great  deal  depends  on 


THE    STORE.  89 

local  circumstances.  It  is  impossible  to  lay  down 
a  rule.  Inquiries  should  be  made  of  societies  in 
similar  circumstances. 

Stock-taking. —  Quarterly  stock-taking  (or 
half-yearly,  where  the  accounts  are  only  made 
up  and  dividends  declared  half-yearly)  is  a  most 
important  matter,  and  it  may  become  a  fruitful 
source,  not  only  of  error  but  of  fraud.  It  must 
be  done  on  a  systematic  principle,  and  the  mem- 
bers of  committees  should  personally  superin- 
tend it.  Stock  ought  to  be  taken  at  cost  price, 
unless  the  goods  are  deteriorated,  or  the  market 
value  has  gone  down.  In  that  case,  they  should 
be  taken  at  what  they  would  cost  to  buy  at  the 
time  stock  is  taken.  In  no  case  ought  goods  to 
be  put  at  more  than  cost  price.  To  do  so  is  to 
appropriate  the  profits  before  the  work  of  selling 
has  been  done,  and  the  expense  of  selling  pro- 
vided for. 


CHAPTER   V. 


THE    ENTERPRISER. 


I  ASKED  Mr.  Spinner  one  day,  with  a  good 
deal  of  curiosity,  in  what  consisted  the  dif- 
ference between  their  plan  and  other  arrange- 
ments of  co-operative  workmen.  I  had  always 
been  taught,  at  college,  and  by  the  superficial 
writers  on  modern  social  order,  that,  while  dif- 
ferent nations  had  had  different  forms  of  success 
in  Co-operation,  no  one  could  yet  claim  that 
success  in  co-operative  manufacture  which  he 
felt  sure  the  Hampton  plan  had  secured. 

It  is  generally  said  that  the  co-operative  sys- 
tem of  house-owning  which  in  America  is  called 
the  Philadelphiasystem,  by  which  a  Philadelphia 
workman  comes  to  own  the  house  he  lives  in,  is 
peculiar  to  America. 

It  is  generally  said  that  the  co-operative  sys- 
tem of  savings  banks,  —  as  it  was  discussed  by 
Mr.  Scheffer, — in  which  the  small  depositors 
are  themselves  the  capitalists  who  lend  to  the 
small  borrowers,  is  a  system  peculiar  to  Ger- 
many. 

It  is  said  also  that  the  Rochdale  system,  the 


THE    ENTERPRISER.  QI 

system  of  co-operative  buying  and  selling,  as  it 
has  been  described  in  the  chapter  above,  called 
"The  Store,"  has  succeeded  in  England,  and 
nowhere  else.  And  it  is  popularly  said  by  the 
general  writers  on  this  subject  that  co-opera- 
tive experiments  in  manufacturing  have  been 
short-lived,  or  have  been  on  too  small  a  scale 
to  be  of  much  account  in  the  great  exigencies  of 
modern  commerce. 

Mr.  Spinner  replied  by  saying  that  there  are  a 
good  many  large  exceptions  to  the  statement 
that  co-operative  industry  has  not  succeeded 
on  a  large  scale.  The  fishing  industry  in  Great 
Britain,  in  France,  and  in  America,  has  always 
been  conducted  on  this  principle.  The  men 
who  go  on  the  voyage  divide  the  profits  of  the 
voyage  by  a  scale  determined  long  ago,  —  in 
which  the  master's  rate  differs  from  the  mate's, 
his  from  the  expert  seaman,  and  his  from  the 
novice  or  the  boy.  The  great  cheese-factories 
of  the  dairy  towns  are  conducted  very  largely 
on  this  principle.  The  farmer  who  sends  in 
only  a  gallon  of  milk  a  day  is  a  shareholder 
in  the  enterprise  of  the  year,  and  receives  his 
proportional  dividend  as  regularly  as  if  he  fur- 
nishcd  half  the  milk  needed  for  the  enterprise. 
The  difificulty  comes,  unquestionably,  —  this  was 
Mr.  Spinner's  theory,  —  when  the  kind  of  manu- 
facturing is  such  as  to  require  a  large  invest- 


92  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

mcnt  of  capital.  In  the  cheese-factory  the  raw 
material  is  the  principal  charge.  In  the  fish- 
eries the  daily  labor  is  the  principal  charge. 
But  the  factory  requires  a  much  larger  plant, 
in  proportion,  than  cither  fishery  or  cheese- 
factory. 

This  difficulty  had  been  met  by  the  Co-opera- 
tors at  Hampton  when  they  agreed  with  Mr. 
Nourse  to  pay  him  a  regular  interest  on  the 
capital  he  furnished  for  this  purpose. 

But  even  then  the  Co-operators  in  manufac- 
ture meet  a  second  difficulty.  They  are  trained 
to  make  goods.  But  they  may  make  as  well  as 
Aladdin's  genii, — and  this  will  be  of  no  use,  if 
they  cannot  sell.  More  than  this, —  it  is  of  no 
use  to  make  well  unless  you  can  buy  the  mate- 
rial cheaply  and  to  advantage.  It  is  clear 
enough  that  a  man  who  is  weaving  cloth  can- 
not be  buying  wool,  —  perhaps  a  thousand  miles 
away,  —  nor  selling  cloth,  after  it  is  made. 
The  workman  who  spins  and  weaves  and  dyes 
is  another  person,  in  another  business,  from 
the  manager  who  has  to  buy  wool  in  one  mar- 
ket and  to  sell  cloth  in  another.  And,  if  the 
workman  has  to  be  dependent  upon  some  com- 
mission merchant  who  undertakes  for  him  either 
of  these  duties  or  both,  he  is  in  as  uncomforta- 
ble a  position  as  when  he  was  dependent  upon 
the  capitalist.     In  practice,  in  the  ordinary  sys- 


THE    ENTERPRISER,  93 

tern,  the  capitalist  undertakes  this  middleman's 
affair.  He  buys  the  wool  and  sells  the  cloth, — 
if  the  enterprise  is  like  that  at  Hampton. 

But  there  is  no  reason,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  why  a  capitalist  should  know  how 
to  buy  wool  or  sell  cloth  any  better  than  the 
weaver  or  spinner.  It  is  a  business  wholly 
distinct  from  the  business  of  lending  money. 
And  in  point  of  fact,  the  failures  of  manufac- 
turers come  in  quite  as  often,  because  the  men 
who  have  this  part  in  charge  do  not  carry  on 
their  business  well,  as  because  the  goods  are 
not  up  to  their  standard  when  the  workmen 
have  failed  in  their  duty. 

"It  is  here,"  said  Mr.  Spinner,  "that  you  find 
the  distinctive  part  of  our  system.  Nourse  fur- 
nishes the  money.  We  pay  him  for  it,  —  as  we 
would  pay  any  bank  for  money  which  we  needed. 
The  workmen  make  the  goods.  We  pay  them 
for  their  day's  work,  exactly  as  you  would  pay 
the  painter  who  painted  your  house.  But 
thirdly,  we  make  a  separate  business  of  con- 
triving the  work,  determining  on  the  patterns 
and  plans,  buying  the  material,  selling  the 
goods. 

"This  is  not  the  affair  of  the  workman.  He 
does  not  know  how. 

"It  is  not  the  affair  of  the  capitalist.  He 
does  not  know  how. 


94  IIOW    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

"  In  our  plan  it  devolves  on  Mr.  Workman  and 
myself.  We  think  we  know  how.  We  try  to 
learn  how.  And  the  whole  thing  will  go  to  de- 
struction if  wc  do  not  know  how.  In  point  of 
historical  fact,  there  would  be  no  mill  here  on 
this  basis,  if  we  had  not  made  the  negotiation 
with  Mr.  Nourse,  and  made  him  believe  it  pos- 
sible. The  old  workmen  and  their  wives  know 
this ;  and  the  hands  generally  understand  it. 
In  practice  it  is  so  clear  that  '  managing,'  — 
buying,  selling,  contriving,  —  are  different  oper- 
ations from  spinning,  weaving,  and  dyeing,  that 
the  thing  explains  itself,  so  soon  as  men  look 
into  it. 

"Very  well.  As  I  explained  to  you,  we  are 
recognized  as  interested  to  the  amount  of  one- 
third  on  the  success  of  the  concern.  That 
is  a  rough  average,  probably  not  quite  accu- 
rate, but  nearly  so,  —  and  convenient.  We  are 
paid  living  wages, — as  if  we  were  foremen  of 
rooms  perhaps,  head-dyers,  or  whatever.  But, 
when  the  yearly  balance  is  made  up,  what- 
ever the  profit  is,  Nourse  receives  one-third  of 
that  profit,  the  workmen  receive  a  third,  — 
just  in  proportion  to  their  wages, — and  we 
receive  a  third.  If  we  were  paid  in  propor- 
tion to  our  wages  only,  we  should  not  receive 
so  much.  But  you  see,  that  is  as  broad  as  it  is 
long.     If  we  were  not  to  have  this  fixed  share. 


THE    ENTERPRISER.  95 

—  one-third  of  the  profit,  —  we  should  never 
undertake  the  management  of  the  affair.  Why 
should  we  .-•  I  am  as  good  a  master-weaver  as 
the  head  of  either  of  our  weaving-rooms.  Why 
should  I  undertake  all  this  business  of  buying, 
selling,  planning,  and  in  general  ordering,  if  I 
am  not  to  be  paid  for  it .' " 

Thus  Mr.  Spinner  made  me  understand  that 
the  failure  of  most  co-operative  enterprises  has 
resulted  from  the  badness  of  the  general  man- 
agement. This  has  resulted  from  the  unwilling- 
ness to  pay  the  general  manager.  The  natural 
suggestion  is  that  capital  shall  have  half  the 
profit  and  the  workingman  half.  This  is  not 
founded  on  any  fixed  law,  but  it  seems  to  be  a 
convenient  and  easy  division.  It  does  not  work. 
The  reason  is  that  there  is  a  third  and  wholly  dis- 
tinct business  involved.  This  is  management. 
It  means  buying  and  selling,  planning,  directing, 
selecting,  enlarging  work  or  reducing  it.  It  re- 
quires a  different  training  and  a  different  use  of 
time  from  the  others. 

Spinner  showed  me  figures,  which  he  had 
drawn  out  very  carefully  from  the  books  of 
some  of  the  largest  American  establishments 
and  from  those  of  some  of  the  smallest.  He  had 
drawn  them  off  very  carefully  in  tables.  They 
showed  what  proportion  of  the  gross  earnings  of 
these  mills,  year  in  and  out,  went  for  the  work- 


96  HOW    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

men,  what  proportion  went  for  material,  what 
propoition  went  for  the  profits  of  the  owners, 
and  what  was  the  interest  on  the  capital  at  the 
market  rates  for  the  year.  Of  course,  one  year 
varied  from  another.  One  figure  was  up  and 
another  down,  as  the  market  for  wool  varied,  or 
that  for  cloth,  or  that  for  money,  or  that  for 
work.  But,  on  the  whole,  in  the  average,  it  was 
curious  to  see  that  his  rough  division  into  thirds 
came  out  about  fairly.  To  give  to  handiwork 
one-third  the  profit,  to  management  one-third, 
and  to  capital  one-third,  after  each  had  been  paid 
the  minimum  of  its  livang  rate,  was  evidently  an 
arrangement  almost  exactly  just.  One  year  with 
another,  you  could  hardly  do  better. 

"  In  a  word,"  he  said  to  me  once  and  again, 
"  co-operative  enterprises  generally  fail  because 
they  do  not  pay  the  management." 


I  said  to  him  one  day,  that  he  had  made  this 
sufficiently  clear  to  me.  Most  business  men 
would  accept  the  statement  as  quite  central, 
that  the  managers  of  an  enterprise  must  be  well 
paid  or  they  will  fail.  Authors,  for  instance,  do 
not  find  it  well  to  print  and  sell  their  own  books. 
They  find  it  better  to  write  them,  and  delegate 
the  printing  and  sale  of  them  to  other  men  who 
make  that   their  business.     The  money  which 


THE    ENTERPRISER.  9/ 

the  author  receives  for  his  part  of  the  work  is 
pretty  generally  agreed  upon.  In  America,  it  is 
ordinarily  ten  per  cent  of  the  gross  sales  at  retail 
prices.  The  profit  of  the  retail  dealer  is  also 
generally  agreed  upon.  It  is  forty  per  cent  of 
the  retail  prices  of  the  books  he  sells.  There  is 
left,  then,  to  the  wholesale  publisher,  the  printer 
and  the  binder,  to  the  freight  companies  which 
carry  the  book  from  place  to  place,  and  to  the 
newspapers  and  magazines  which  advertise  it, 
fifty  per  cent  of  the  gross  sales.  This  rough 
statement  shows  that  in  the  business  of  the 
manufacture  and  sale  of  books  a  very  large  part 
of  any  profit  is  paid  to  management.  The  pro- 
portion will  differ,  of  course,  in  different  sorts 
of  adventure.  If  I  manufacture  plain  sheetings, 
I  make  an  article  for  which  there  is  a  steady 
demand.  The  risk  of  putting  it  on  the  market 
is  less  than  if  it  were  a  volume  of  sonnets  or  a 
novel.  But,  on  the  whole,  men  find  that  it  is 
better  to  intrust  the  sale  of  their  work  to  people 
who  are  used  to  that  business,  and  to  pay  them 
well  for  it.  An  author  may  print  his  own  book, 
or  pay  the  printer  for  doing  so.  But  he  will  be 
apt  to  have  a  very  large  pile  of  his  own  books  in 
his  own  attic  or  cellar.  In  the  long  run,  he  will 
find  it  best  to  pay  for  the  oversight  of  publishing. 
I  said  to  Mr.  Spinner  that  I  could  well  see 
that    men    acquainted   with    general   business 


98  now    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

should  recognize  the  truth  of  his  maxim,  that 
you  must  pay  well  for  management.  But  I  said 
I  should  not  think  that  when  the  day  for  the 
dividend  came  the  workmen  would  like  it.  I 
should  think  they  would  be  jealous  of  that  part 
of  the  plan. 

He  replied  rather  grimly,  as  if  I  had  hit  a 
spot  which  it  v/as  disagreeable  to  him  to  talk 
about.  I  have  observed  that  visitors  who  are 
not  quite  at  home  with  their  hosts  are  a  little 
apt  to  bring  up  the  most  delicate  questions,  as 
if  the  solution  could  be  given  in  an  epigram. 
Thus,  in  old  times,  an  English  traveller  would 
ask  a  Southern  planter  if  he  thought  the  system 
of  slavery  abstractly  just ;  and  an  American 
clergyman  to-day  will  ask  an  English  bishop 
why  he  does  not  prevent  the  sale  of  clerical  pre- 
ferments. In  somewhat  this  way,  —  inoppor- 
tune, I  will  confess,  —  I  asked  Mr.  Spinner 
whether  the  work-people  liked  the  arrangement 
by  which  "  Management  "  took  one-third  of  the 
profit.  I  saw  in  a  moment  that  it  was  a  matter 
a  good  deal  discussed,  and  that  the  renewal  of 
the  discussion  with  a  novice  annoyed  him.  I 
could  not  help  that,  however,  and,  in  truth,  I 
did  not  much  care.  I  was  there,  not  to  enter 
tain  him,  but  to  find,  if  I  could,  what  was  their 
solution  of  the  problems  of  capital  and  the  in- 
dustry it  needed  ;  —  or,  if  you  please,  of  industry 


THE    ENTERPRISER.  99 

and  the  capital  it  needed.  Mr.  Spinner  had 
said,  again  and  again,  that  the  essential  part  of 
their  system  was  the  distinct  recognition  of  the 
value  of  the  management.  I  did  not  understand 
the  system,  —  that  was  very  clear,  —  until  I 
knew  whether  the  workmen  liked  the  theory  as 
well  as  he  did,  who  was  himself  a  manager. 

His  mere  manner  was  enough  to  show  that 
this  was  familiar  ground  to  him,  which  he  had  had 
to  go  over  till  he  was  tired,  with  every  new  in- 
quirer. Very  well ;  I  could  not  help  that.  Of 
course  it  was  to  be  often  explained,  if  it  was  the 
distinctive  part  of  their  system. 

He  asked  pardon,  however,  for  the  annoyance 
on  his  face,  which  he  saw  that  I  observed.  Then 
he  really  laughed  at  himself.  "  It  is  ground  so 
familiar  to  me,"  he  said,  "  that  I  forget  that  it  is 
new  to  others,  —  as  the  ticket-master  forgets 
that  the  woman  who  asks  him  questions  to-day 
is  not  the  same  woman  who  asked  them  yester- 
day. 

"I  do  not  think  the  'old  men,'  as  we  call 
them,  though  most  of  them  are  not  forty,  ever 
have  any  question  about  this  part  of  the  plan. 
Indeed,  they  know,  as  well  as  I  do,  that  it  is  es- 
sential. They  know  that  none  of  them  or  any 
of  us  would  be  here,  unless  the  managers  had 
laid  out  the  system.  As  I  said,  they  know,  as  a 
fact  in  history,  that  Workman  and  I  persuaded 


lOO  now    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

Nourse  to  come  into  the  plan.  They  know, 
also,  that  we  are  the  people  whom  he  looks  to, 
—  that  he  deals  with  us,  as  far  as  there  is  any 
dealing  between  him  and  the  concern,  —  so  that 
we  are  a  necessity.  What  is  more,  however, 
they  know  that,  in  fact,  the  thing  works  well,  — 
that  they  receive,  on  the  whole,  much  higher 
wages  than  they  ever  had  before  they  came 
here,  —  that  the  work  of  the  mill  is  better  than 
it  was  in  old  times,  and  the  reputation  of  our 
goods  higher  in  the  market.  They  know  that 
we  work  with  less  waste  and  more  profit,  be- 
cause we  are  working  on  this  general  plan.  So 
far,  good.  And  so  far  as  those  who  began  with 
us  go,  there  is  never  any  discussion. 

"  But  you  are  quite  right  in  thinking  that 
new-comers,  who  have  not  worked  with  us 
long,  invariably  question  this  part  of  our  ar- 
rangement at  first.  They  say  that  Workman 
and  I  have  the  lion's  share.  The  boys  caricature 
us  sometimes,  well ;  even  the  older  ones  will 
fling  at  us  in  the  club  meetings  and  other  dis- 
cussions. Of  course  there  have  been  a  thousand 
other  plans  proposed.  Of  course,  any  hand  new 
at  the  bellows  thinks  he  can  blow  better  than 
the  old  hand  did,  and  makes  his  new  suggestion. 
It  generally  amounts  to  this,  of  course,  —  that  a 
considerable  sum  would  be  saved  to  the  work- 
men themselves  if  a  committee  of  manasrement 


THE    ENTERPRISER.  lOI 

of  their  own  superintended  the  work,  as  Work- 
man and  I  do  now  ;  —  if  a  fixed  allowance  were 
made  to  them  for  their  compensation,  and  then 
the  whole  profit  were  divided  in  proportion  to 
the  wages.  I  do  not  see  that  they  are  apt  to 
wish  to  increase  Nourse's  share. 

"  But  I  ask  nothing  better  than  that  a  critic 
shall  have  to  put  his  plan  on  paper,  and  make  it 
popular  with  the  rest.  Observe,  there  is  no  an- 
nual meeting  where  it  can  be  proposed  as  a 
practical  scheme.  Every  one  knows  that  these 
works  are  not  run  by  caucus  or  in  town-meeting. 
No  one  is  here  long  who  does  not  like  to  be  here. 
And,  unless  the  man  likes  to  come,  and  take 
wages  at  our  rates,  he  does  not  come.  Still, 
the  whole  scheme  is  certainly  democratic,  and 
rests  on  the  substantial  satisfaction  of  every- 
body. Naturally,  it  attracts  more  than  an  aver- 
age share  of  theorizers  or  schemers.  So  that  in 
any  debating-club,  as  at  the  Union,  it  is  very 
likely  that  an  Ideal  Plan  for  its  improvement 
shall  be  brought  forward.  And  in  this  country, 
particularly  when  times  are  bad,  there  will  be  a 
plenty  of  broken-winded  flannel  mills,  or  other  con- 
cerns which  have  shut  down,  where  the  owners 
are  open  to  offers  to  buy  cheap.  There  was  a 
young  man  here,  named  Crichton,  who  wanted 
to  persuade  some  of  the  other  young  fellows  to 
go  up  to  Eden,  twenty  miles  up  the  river,  with 


I02  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

him,  and  work  out  a  plan  he  had.  So,  in  one 
way  or  another,  we  have  had  plenty  of  plans  for 
improving  on  our  method  of  sharing. 

"This  is  the  reason  why  I  say  so  confidently 
that  the  making  an  equal  allowance  to  'Manage- 
ment '  has  proved  necessary: — I  mean  an  al- 
lowance of  profit,  equal  to  that  assigned  to  Work 
and  to  Capital.  It  has  proved  necessary,  be- 
cause so  many  of  these  other  plans  have  been 
proved  inefificient.  The  men  will  not  trust  them- 
selves and  their  families  to  an  annual  caucus. 
They  will  not  go  into  a  scheme  which  may  be 
over-set  in  a  minute.  And  capital  will  not  trust 
itself,  unless  there  is  somebody  to  trust  itself  to. 
Theo.  Brown  used  to  say  that  when  you  made  a 
stocking,  you  could  not  'make  believe'  round 
once,  and  then  knit  into  the  '  make  believe.' 
There  must  be  something  to  knit  into.  In  prac- 
tice, there  must  be  a  management,  which  may 
contract  with  the  men  and  compact  with  the 
property  owner." 

I  said  that  it  was  the  fate  of  middlemen  to 
be  unpopular.  Spinner  said  that  I  need  not  tell 
him  that.  But  he  said  that  that  was  one  thing 
v.'hich  they  were  for ;  that  some  one  must  stand 
the  brunt ;  and  that,  if  he  and  Workman  were 
honest  and  impartial,  and  carried  open  accounts, 
which  every  one  might  see,  he  would  risk  any 
unpopularity. 


THE    ENTERPRISER.  IO3 

"In  truth,"  he  said,  "with  every  year  there 
is  less  and  less  of  such  complaining  or  such  criti- 
cism as  you  inquire  about.  The  scheme  rests  on 
its  substantial  justice.  When  you  buy  a  piece  of 
meat  in  the  market,  or  hire  a  cab  at  the  Forty- 
Second  Street  Station,  you  do  not  complain  be- 
cause the  butcher  makes  a  profit,  or  the  cab- 
driver.  You  do  not  suppose  that  either  of  them 
is  there  as  a  philanthropist,  and  you  do  not  sug- 
gest to  them  that  they  shall  send  you  a  check  on 
Christmas  Day,  with  your  share  of  the  profits  of 
the  year.  You  recognize  butchering  and  cab- 
driving  as  a  different  business  from  your  business, 
and  you  do  not  ask  to  share  the  cab-driver's  prof- 
its, more  than  you  expect  him  to  share  yours. 
You  do  share  profits  in  a  Mutual  Insurance  Com- 
pany, for  there  you  are  all  in  the  same  enterprise, 
and  you  succeed  or  fail  under  the  same  laws. 
And  so,  in  the  spinning  and  weaving,  we  are  all 
in  the  same  business,  and  gain  or  lose  by  the 
same  laws.  But,  as  I  said  in  the  beginning,  two 
things  are  sure.  i.  Management  is  a  separate 
profession,  which  must  be  well  paid.  And  2. 
Management  involves  permanence,  or  there  will 
be  no  confidence  or  security. 

"I  have  told  you,"  said  he,  "of  the  criticisms. 
Now  let  me  tell  you  a  story  on  the  other  side. 
When,  in  October  two  years  since,  the  money 
market  tightened  up  as  it  did,  half  a  dozen  large 


104  IlOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

mill-owners  chose  to  fail,  and  there  was  what 
you  might  call  a  special  panic  in  the  trade  in 
woollens,  besides  the  general  panic  on  Wall 
Street,  which  is  apt  to  come  round  in  the  autumn. 
As  it  happened,  we  were  carrying  an  unusually 
large  stock  of  goods,  which  I  did  not  choose  to 
sacrifice  at  a  time  when  the  market  was  badly 
depressed.  But  we  wanted  money,  —  we  wanted 
it  badly.  In  ordinary  times,  I  could  have  had 
it  for  the  asking,  at  one  of  the  three  or  four 
banks  where  they  knew  our  paper.  But  they 
would  not  look  at  me  then,  and,  —  well,  I  do  not 
like  to  go  to  note  shavers.  Now  there  is  very 
little  secrecy  among  us  managers  here.  And 
when  I  came  home  pretty  blue,  one  Saturday 
night,  it  was  known  quite  soon  Monday  morning 
what  was  the  matter  with  me.  Then  it  was  that 
the  system  was  tested,  Mr.  Freeman.  One  of 
those  very  men  who  had  said  the  hardest  things 
of  me  not  a  year  before,  —  you  know  the  man, 
he  is  that  man  Woodruff,  whose  son  you  took 
a-fishing,  —  came  round  to  me  on  Monday  night. 
He  told  me  that  they  had  been  putting  their 
heads  together,  and  comparing  their  bank-books, 
and  that,  if  I  thought  twelve  thousand  dollars 
would  be  of  any  use  to  me  the  next  Saturday, 
they  could  manage  that  I  could  have  it,  and  as 
much  more  at  the  end  of  the  month.  And  more 
than  this  ;  he  said  if  we  were  pinched  for  money, 


THE    ENTERPRISER.  10$ 

as  he  thought  we  should  be  hkely  to  be,  he  had 
a  Hst,  which  he  gave  me,  of  forty-seven  of  the 
best  hands  he  had,  who  would  not  draw  their 
wages  for  four  or  five  weeks  from  that  time. 
Well,  long  before  his  five  weeks  were  up,  I  had 
sold  my  goods  at  very  handsome  prices,  and  I 
was  able  to  address  them  a  circular  note,  to 
thank  them  for  their  loyalty." 

Spinner  told  this  pretty  story  with  a  good  deal 
of  pride.  He  opened  his  desk,  and  took  out  a 
copy  of  his  circular  note,  handsomely  printed, 
and  gave  it  to  me.     It  was  in  these  words  :  — 

"Office  of  the  Hampton  Mills. 

"  On  behalf  of  the  management  of  the  mills, 
and  of  Mr.  Nourse,  who  is  absent  in  the  Holy 
Land,  the  undersigned  wish  to  express  their 
thanks  as  well  as  his  for  the  loyalty,  good  sense 
and  courage  with  which  all  parties  have  rendered 
efficient  assistance  to  the  Mills,  in  the  late 
severe  commercial  crisis. 

"  It  may  be  true  that,  in  the  disorganized  con- 
dition of  trade  and  commerce,  such  panics  or 
crises  cannot  be  avoided. 

"  But  this  is  certain,  that,  with  such  good  will 
and  devotion  to  a  common  cause  as  have  been 
shown  by  those  who  have  undertaken  the  enter- 
prise of  the  Hampton  Mills,  the  convulsions  of 
the  money-market  are  not  to  be  greatly  dreaded. 


I06  now    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

We  have  had  an  opportunity  to  show  each  other, 
if  we  did  not  know  it  before,  that  there  is 
strength  in  union.  And  such  an  experience 
as  this  of  the  last  two  months  is  enough  to 
prove  that  our  enterprise  is  on  a  soHd  foun- 
dation. 

"  With  new  wishes  to  deserve  the  confidence 
and  respect  of  our  fellow-workmen,  we  are 
"Their  friends, 

"William  Spinner. 
"John  Workman." 

"There  was  really  nothing  wonderful  about 
it,"  said  Spinner  thoughtfully,  when  he  saw  that 
I  had  twice  read  his  circular  through.  "  No,  — 
keep  it.  I  gave  it  to  you  to  keep.  I  have  more 
copies  here. 

"  There  was  really  nothing  wonderful  about  it, 
if  one  will  only  remember  who  Jesus  Christ  was, 
and  what  he  meant  to  set  in  motion,  — nay,  what 
he  did  set  in  motion.  Mr.  Freeman,  if  I  could 
tell  the  ministers  what  to  preach,  I  would  have 
them,  as  often  as  once  a  month,  show  to  people, 
especially  young  people,  how  practical,  how  effi- 
cient, —  how  business-like,  if  you  please,  —  this 
gospel  of  our  Lord  is.  There  is  apt  to  be  so 
much  rhetoric  and  poetry  in  preaching,  that  I 
am  afraid  young  people  think  Christianity  is  all 
outside  of  life,  —  that  it  is  matter  of  fancy  or 


THE    ENTERPRISER.  IO7 

imagination.  Now,  if  I  were  a  preacher,  I 
should  hke  nothing  better  than  to  show  that 
the  Saviour  was  the  most  practical  reformer,  as 
he  was  certainly  the  most  successful  reformer, 
not  only  in  what  they  call  in  their  sermons  the 
affairs  of  Heaven,  or  the  Heavenly  Kingdom, 
but  in  what  you  or  I  or  these  young  people 
would  call  '  Every-day  life. ' 

"  Did  I  ever  tell  you  of  what  Mrs.  Spinner 
said  to  a  fine  lady  in  Warburton  yonder,  who 
was  troubled  because  she  could  not  keep  her 
servants  .-• " 

I  said  he  never  had.  Mr.  Spinner  laughed. 
"Why,"  said  he,  "Nancy  heard  her  long  story 
about  the  troubles  she  had  had  ever  since  she 
began  housekeeping,  and  then  she  said,  *  Did 
you  ever  try  the  golden  rule  .-• '  " 


CHAPTER   VI. 


CHILDREN  S    WORK. 


I  NOTICED,  on  the  first  day  when  I  went 
through  the  mills,  that  there  were  no  little 
children  at  work  in  any  department.  There 
were  a  good  many  young  people,  whom  I 
should  call  boys  and  girls,  but  they  were, 
clearly  enough,  more  than  sixteen  years  old. 

I  noticed,  also,  however,  that  there  were  no 
boys  loafing  about  the  village.  After  my  first 
day's  experience  in  seeking  trout  in  the  ponds 
above  the  town,  I  tried  to  find  a  boy  who  would 
go  with  me,  to  carry  an  extra  basket  I  had,  and, 
indeed,  for  companionship.  And  although,  after 
a  day  or  two,  I  secured  the  service  of  such  a 
boy,  —  who  became  a  valued  friend  before  I 
left  Hampton,  —  this  was  only  after  rather  a 
careful  negotiation,  and  on  special  terms,  which, 
if  this  paper  does  not  grow  too  long,  I  may 
have  a  chance  to  tell. 

I  was  talking  one  afternoon  with  a  man 
named  Holmes,  whom  I  had  fallen  in  with  in 
the  works,  and  of  whom  I  have  spoken  once 
already,    and    I    asked    him    particularly    about 


CHILDREN  S   WORK.  IO9 

what  he  thought  of  the  labor  or  work  of  chil- 
dren, and  what  they  did  about  it.  He  said 
that  he  did  not  know  of  any  fixed  rule  in  the 
matter,  which  would  prevent  Mr.  Spinner  from 
hiring  many  more  children  if  he  wished,  or  if 
he  thought  the  work  required  it.  "  But,"  he 
said,  with  a  good  deal  of  emphasis,  knocking 
the  ashes  from  his  pipe  as  a  sort  of  gesture 
accompanying,  "he  docs  not  think  the  work 
requires  it,  —  and  we  do  not  think  so,  —  I  do 
not  think  so,  —  and  the  men  generally  do  not." 
It  was  quite  clear  to  my  mind,  as  he  spoke, 
that  in  the  face  of  such  unanimity  of  "the 
men  "  Mr.  Spinner  would  not  be  apt  to  change 
his  opinion. 

"You  see,  Mr.  Freeman,"  said  Holmes,  "most 
of  the  men  grew  up  in  mills,  —  were  trained  in 
them  themselves,  —  and  they  do  not  like  it.  I 
was  in  a  mill  in  England,  so  young  that  I  hardly 
remember  anything  before  I  went  there.  Well, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  a  boy  picks  up  some- 
thing that  way.  He  gets  steady  habits  of 
work,  I  guess,  and  I  guess  there  is  a  certain 
promptness,  —  readiness,  —  call  it  what  you 
will,  in  good  hands  that  have  been  trained  so, 
trhat  they  would  say  came  from  their  beginning 
early.  But  then,  what  is  that  ?  I  have  plenty 
of  men  and  women  in  this  mill  who  never  saw  a 
loom  till  they  were  twenty  years  old,  who  are 


I  lO  HOW    TIIEY    LIVI:D    IN    HAMPTON. 

just  as  prompt  and  just  as  steady.  They  did 
not  get  it  in  one  way,  so  they  got  it  in  another. 

"To  go  back,  Mr.  Freeman,  I  do  not  think, 
on  the  whole,  that  men  or  women  who  grew 
up  from  childhood  in  a  mill  want  to  have  their 
children  grow  up  so,  if  they  can  help  it.  If  they 
can  help  it,  —  that's  where  it  is.  Perhaps  they 
think  they  cannot  help  it.  Perhaps  the  whole 
business  is  counted  so  close,  —  I  mean  is  car- 
ried on  with  so  narrow  a  margin,  —  that  the 
wages  of  the  family  only  amount  to  enough  to 
keep  the  family  in  bread  and  butter.  But  then, 
what  does  this  mean  ?  I  do  not  know  how 
much  you  know  of  trade  or  manufacturing.  I 
know  that  there  is  no  such  squeeze  as  that  in 
the  woollen  business  now,  —  nor  has  been  for 
twenty  years,  —  nor  is  like  to  be.  No,  indeed, 
Mr.  Freemaft ;  and  if  there  were  any,  I  would 
give  up  making  cloth,  and  I  would  go  to  Dakota 
and  make  wheat,  or  to  Montana  and  make  wool, 
—  that's  what  I  would  do." 

And  Mr.  Holmes  laughed  as  he  thought  of 
himself  on  a  ranch  in  Montana. 

"  You  see,"  he  continued,  filling  his  pipe  again, 
"  you  see,  Mr.  Freeman,  there  are  a  great  many 
other  things  a  boy  has  to  learn,  and  a  girl  too, 
besides  spinning  and  weaving,  if  they  are  to  live 
decently  and  comfortably  in  such  a  country  as 
America.     And  I  do  not  mean  school  learning 


CHILDREN  S   WORK.  Ill 

either.  That's  all  very  well,  but  my  children  learn 
a  good  many  things,  and  need  to  learn  them, 
which  Miss  Jane  Stevens  does  not  teach  them, 
nor  any  other  schoolmistress  or  schoolmaster." 

I  said  that  I  believed  he  had  a  good  many 
children. 

"Ten  of  my  own,"  he  said  with  some  pride, 
"and  Peter,  who  came  in  with  the  mail  just  now. 
He  is  just  the  same  as  one  of  ours,  but  he  is 
really  the  cousin  of  the  others,  son  of  a  brother 
of  Mrs.  Holmes,  who  was  lost  at  sea.  Eleven  of 
them  there  are,  I  took  Tom  into  my  own  room 
with  me  the  day  he  was  sixteen,  —  and  I  suppose 
I  shall  let  Susie  come  in  the  day  she  is  sixteen,  if 
she  wants  to.  But  maybe  she  will  change  her 
mind  before  then." 

And  he  paused  a  minute,  as  if  considering 
this  question,  before  he  went  on  in  his  rather 
voluble  conversation. 

"I  told  them,  when  we  came  here,"  he  then 
said,  "that  if  we  meant  to  have  our  children 
grow  up  strong  men  and  women,  they  must  be 
in  the  open  air,  they  must  have  enough  to  eat 
and  drink,  and  they  must  want  to  eat  and  drink 
it.  You  see,  Mr.  Freeman,  it  is  my  notion  that 
all  mill-towns  have  suffered  from  the  idea  that 
they  are  to  be  nothing  but  mill-towns.  You 
say  '  Lowell  is  a  factory-town,'  and  '  Holyoke 
is  a  factory-town,'   as  if  because  they  are  fac- 


112  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

tory-towns,  they  can  be  nothing  else.  Suppose 
you  made  the  people  in  a  ship  into  one  com- 
munity in  this  fashion.  Suppose  that  when 
you  launched  her,  you  said  to  all  the  people 
that  sailed  her  that  they  were  to  be  sailors,  or 
at  sea,  all  their  lives.  Suppose  you  said  so  to 
their  wives  and  children, — just  like  those  peo- 
ple that  live  in  the  boats  in  Canton  harbor. 
What  sort  of  men,  I  wonder,  would  grow  up 
on  your  ship  ?  After  all,  the  mill  is  only  a  ship 
on  land.  And  what. I  say  is,  that  the  boys  and 
girls  in  it,  even  if  they  are,  in  the  end,  to  work 
in  it,  want  to  see  and  learn  and  know  some 
other  things,  just  as  the  sailor's  boys  do  be- 
fore they  go  out  with  him :  —  and,  for  that 
matter,  his  girls,  who  never  go  out  with  him. 

"  Now  it  was  easier  for  us  to  act  on  such  a 
plan,  because  here,  from  the  beginning,  the  men 
who  owned  this  plant  had  the  courage  to  say 
that  they  would  earn  their  money  in  manufact- 
uring and  in  nothing  else.  For  the  rest  of  their 
investment  they  wanted  interest  and  not  profits. 
Perhaps  you  know  how  they  gave  up  the  store, 
and  said  they  did  not  mean  to  try  and  make 
money  out  of  that ;  that  v/as  not  their  affair. 
So  they  gave  up  the  tenements." 

I  said  that  I  did  know  this,  and  that  I  hoped 
to  know  more  of  the  Co-operative  System  than 
I  did  when  I  came  to  Hampton. 


CHILDREN  S    WORK.  II3 

"Well,  now,"  he  said,  "the  same  rule  works, 
of  course,  about  rents  and  gardens, — houses, 
—  about  these  places  where  we  live.  Of  course, 
when  a  man  like  our  Mr.  Nourse  buys  a  prop- 
erty like  this,  there  is  a  temptation  to  see  what 
the  rents  on  the  houses  will  be.  It  is  natural  to 
say  'they  have  always  rented  for  ten  per  cent 
on  the  valuation  or  cost,  and  that  will  be  but  a 
very  small  rent,'  —  so  he  will  go  on  so.  There 
is  no  great  oppression  if  he  wants  to  do  so.  But 
I  do  not  believe  it  pays  in  the  long  run.  To  be- 
gin with,  I  do  not  believe  it  pays  any  man  to  be 
in  two  or  three  different  trades.  If  he  makes 
horse-shoes,  I  say  let  him  make  horse-shoes, 
and  not  try  to  sell  ribbons  in  the  evenings.  If 
a  man  makes  woollen  cloth,  let  him  sell  woollen 
cloth,  and  not  have  another  account  for  the  gro- 
cery shop,  and  another  for  the  rents  and  repairs 
of  his  houses.     That's  the  way  it  looks  to  me. 

"  Anyway,  as  you  know,  these  people,  or 
rather,  this  man,  were  ready  to  let  us  do  what  we 
chose,  if  we  only  paid  him  the  market  interest 
on  the  capital,  and  gave  him  a  third  of  the 
profits,  if  profits  there  were. 

"  Now  I,  and  Spinner,  and  Workman,  —  v/ell, 
a  good  many  of  us,  —  we  went  in  for  Real  Estate. 

"Real  Estate,  Mr.  Freeman,  with  a  large  R 
and  a  large  E,  —  a  very  large  R,  and  a  very  large 
E.     '  Fasten  a  man  to  the  ground,'  says  I,  *  and 


114  '"^^^'    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

let  it  be  worth  his  while  to  make  it  worth  living 
on.'  No,  Mr.  Freeman,"  —  and  he  laughed,  —  "  I 
spent  a  winter  with  the  Cherokees  once,  at  a 
place  they  call  Tahlequah.  I  saw  enough  of  com- 
mon property  in  land  then  and  there,  and  I  do 
not  want  to  see  any  more.  *  Real  Estate,'  says 
I.  And  when  I  said  this  to  the  others,  I  did 
not  go  back  on  what  I  have  been  saying  to  you. 
Because  when  I  own  a  place,  as  I  own  this 
place," — and  here  Holmes  looked  up  with  a 
certain  pride  on  his  wife's  trumpet  vines  and 
Dutchman's  pipe,  which  shaded  the  piazza  where 
we  were  sitting,  —  "  when  I  owned  this  place,  — 
when  I  bought  it,  —  I  did  not  buy  it  to  make 
money.  I  make  money  yonder,  — I  make  money 
by  making  cloth,  —  or  helping  make  it.  But  I 
want  a  real  home.  I  want  it  for  her,  and  I  want 
it  for  them.  And  so  I  said  to  Spinner  and  Work- 
man, says  I,  '  You  let  these  boys  and  girls  of 
mine  live  in  a  place  I  own,  and  we  shall  all  take 
care  of  it.  You  put  me  in  a  tenement  some- 
body else  owns,  —  and  for  one  I  shall  be  apt  to 
let  somebody  else  take  care  of  it.'  So  they  fixed 
it,  or  all  of  us  fixed  it  together.  They  gave  me 
a  bond  for  a  deed  of  this  place  ;  it  was  one  acre 
then  ;  I  have  another  acre  back  there  now,  and 
afterward  I  bought  a  wood-lot  yonder.  I  was  to 
pay  five  per  cent  interest,  and  ten  per  cent  a 
year  on  the  capital  if  I  could,  and  I  was  to  have 


CHILDREN  S    WORK.  1 1 5 

a  deed  when  I  had  paid  forty  per  cent.  But, 
you  know,  after  we  were  sure  the  thing  would 
work  here,  it  was  not  much  money,  and  I  drew 
out  of  the  savings  bank  all  I  needed  to  pay  up 
the  whole.  Yes,  it  is  a  pretty  place.  But  it's 
a  much  prettier  place  than  it  was  when  we  came 
here.  And  that  is  what  I  was  coming  at.  If 
you  do  not  mind,  put  on  your  hat,  and  come 
round  with  me." 

So  we  walked  round  his  little  domain.  Yes  ; 
a  little  domain,  but  his  own.  And  he  had  all 
the  pride  in  it,  and  had  the  right  to,  which  my 
friend  Mr.  Coram  has,  when  he  takes  me 
through  his  grape-houses  and  other  forcing 
houses.  He  made  me  go  into  the  large  hen- 
house, and  showed  me  what  he  could  of  the 
methods  of  the  hatching  house.  But  he  said  he 
must  not  interfere  too  far,  or  his  wife  and  his 
girls  would  be  after  him.  He  told  me  with  pride 
that,  excepting  three  days'  labor,  when  he  hired 
a  man  to  help  in  digging  some  post-holes,  and 
in  some  other  heavy  work,  every  nail  had  been 
driven,  every  partition  framed,  and  every  sash 
fixed  in  its  place  by  the  handiwork  of  his  boys. 
"  Let  them  laugh  at  the  Industrial  School,"  said 
he,  "that  is  what  comes  of  it."  Then  I  had  to 
go  through  the  back  lot,  which  had  been  added 
to  the  other,  and  I  was  indeed  surprised  to  see 
the  show  he  had  of  pears,  and  to  notice  how  sci- 


Il6  now    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

entifically  even  the  beds  of  vegetables  had  been 
trained.  All  the  potatoes  of  the  winter,  all  the 
celery,  all  the  tomatoes  of  the  summer,  and  all 
that  Mrs.  Holmes  and  her  daughters  would  can, 
were  the  product  of  this  garden.  All  the  poul- 
try they  ate,  and  all  the  eggs,  came  from  this 
hen-house,  and  they  raised  enough  to  pay  in 
simple  barter  for  their  milk,  which  came  from  a 
neighbor,  who  on  a  similar  lot  kept  a  cow, 
though  he  had  to  hire  pasturage.  We  were  still 
surveying  the  crops  when  the  bell  rang  for  tea. 
He  asked  me  to  take  tea  with  them,  and  I  was 
glad  to  do  so.  It  gave  me  a  chance  to  see  the 
family,  all  the  way  down  to  the  little  curly- 
headed  girl  who  sat  in  a  high-chair,  and  kept 
the  table  clear  for  a  small  semicircle  drawn 
from  that  centre.  There  was  a  younger  boy  in 
the  cradle. 

The  supper,  physically  speaking,  did  credit  to 
Mrs.  Holmes  and  to  her  daughters.  This  is  not 
the  place  to  describe  that  matter.  Indeed,  the 
rugged  and  hearty  aspect  of  the  children,  who 
did  thorough  justice  to  their  mother's  provisions 
and  previsions,  was  what  interested  me.  There 
was  no  hurry  at  table,  but  "  when  hunger  both 
and  thirst  were  fully  satisfied,"  we  adjourned  to 
the  piazza  again,  and  Holmes  took  up  the  line  of 
his  argument. 

"  What  I  set  out  to  say,  when  we  went  out  into 


CHILDREN  S   WORK.  1 1 7 

the  garden,  was  this.  Suppose  I  granted  to 
Adam  Smith,  and  the  other  high-flyers,  that  La- 
bor, as  they  call  it,  by  which  they  generally 
mean  work,  shall  be  divided  to  the  bottom,  if 
you  want  to  make  money.  I  do  not  grant  it, 
but  suppose  I  did.  Suppose  that  every  egg  in 
the  omelette  you  ate  to-night  had  been  bought 
in  Michigan,  as  on  Adam  Smith's  theory  it 
would  and  should  have  been,  in  the  cheapest  mar- 
ket. Suppose  even  it  was  as  fresh,  coming  from 
Michigan.  Suppose  that  honey,  which  came 
from  Betty's  hive,  had  been  brought  from  De- 
troit, and  had  cost  a  cent  a  pound  less  than  it 
has  cost  me.  Suppose  every  pear  which  was 
on  that  dish  could  have  been  bought  in  Went- 
worth  market  cheaper  than  the  money  it  has 
cost  us  to  keep  up  the  orchard.  Hark  you,  I 
do  not  grant  one  of  these  things,  but  suppose 
it  was  so,  what  am  I  for,  Mr.  Freeman  .-*  What 
is  Clarinda  for  ?  What  are  we  living  for  ?  What 
is  this  house  for,  anyway  ?  Certainly  it  is  that 
these  children  may  grow  up  into  strong  and  good 
and  well  men  and  women.  In  the  long  run,  that 
is  the  thing  I  have  most  at  heart,  and  Clarinda. 
Now  let  us  suppose  that  since  April  my  radishes 
and  strawberries  and  raspberries  and  currants  and 
peas  and  beans  and  corn  and  cauliflower  and 
cabbages  and  potatoes  have  cost  me  a  hundred 
dollars  more  than  they  would  have  cost  me  in 


Il8  now    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

the  market,  —  what  should  I  do  with  this  hun- 
dred dollars  ?  Suppose  I  spent  it,- — as  observe 
I  have  spent  it,  —  on  the  education  of  these  boys 
and  girls  who  have  worked  on  this  garden, 
among  other  things.  There  are  four  of  them. 
Where  could  I  have  got  for  one  of  them,  for 
twenty-five  dollars,  what  I  have  secured  by  keep- 
ing him  at  work  under  my  eye  or  his  mother's  ? 

"  But  Adam  Smith,  or  even  Robert  Owen, 
might  tell  me  that  if  the  older  boys  and  girls 
were  in  the  factory  I  should  have  twelve  or  even 
fourteen  dollars  a  week  more  on  the  pay-roll 
every  Saturday,  and  that  that  goes  a  great  way 
toward  Clarinda's  account  at  the  store  for  flour 
and  butter  and  meat  and  shirts  and  trousers  and 
coats  and  bonnets  and  gowns,  and  above  all,  for 
shoes,"  —  and  here  he  laughed  at  his  own  enu- 
meration of  man's  requisites. 

"There  is  no  doubt  of  that.  And  I  do  not 
mean  to  say  that  eleven  hearty  children, — for 
Peter  is  all  the  same  as  our  own,  —  eat  nothing. 
Eleven  children  like  these,  Mr.  Freeman,  eat  in  a 
year  well-nigh  seven  barrels  of  flour,  and  other 
things  in  proportion.  Let  'em,  says  I, — the 
more  they  shall  have.  And  I  do  not  pretend 
that  my  farm  here,  as  a  machine  for  producing 
nitrogen  and  phosphates  out  of  the  rain  and  the 
sun,  compares  with  the  machines  out  in  Dakota 
which  do  the  same  thing.     But  I  do  claim,  as  the 


CHILDREN  S    WORK.  I IQ 

patent  lawyers  say,  that,  as  a  machine  for  training 
boys  and  girls  into  men  and  women,  it  is  much 
simpler  and  much  better  adapted  to  the  purpose 
than  the  complex  machine  by  which  Peter  works 
at  a  loom  and  earns  money  to  send  to  Dakota 
and  buy  wheat.     You  see  what  I  mean." 

Yes,  I  did  see  very  well,  and  I  was  glad  he  had 
worked  it  out  for  himself  so  well.  He  wanted 
to  show  me  his  figures,  and  to  please  him  I  looked 
at  them.  But  I  do  not  copy  them  here,  though 
I  could,  because  the  reader  would  incredulously 
think  they  had  been  doctored.  The  truth  is, 
however,  that  such  a  spot  as  Holmes  owned,  if 
manured  by  the  foot  of  the  owner,  as  John  Ran- 
dolph said,  becomes  more  productive  than  the 
outsiders  think.  It  was  not  difficult,  in  a  place 
like  that,  to  procure  the  stimulants  they  wanted 
for  their  garden-beds.  They  had  only  too  much 
working  force,  when  they  needed  to  plant  and 
to  weed ;  and  the  harvesting,  as  Holmes  said, 
laughing,  took  care  of  itself,  when  the  family 
was  to  eat  the  strawberries.  The  secret  of  suc- 
cess, if  one  spoke  of  the  theory  of  the  thing,  was 
that  this  very  evanescent  force  which  we  call  la- 
bor could  be  applied  at  any  moment  when  it 
was  wanted,  without  contract,  without  wages, 
without  book-keeping  ;  and  something  came  of 
it.  What  came  of  it  I  had  seen  in  the  eggs  and 
milk  and  cream  and  honey  and  stewed  pears  on 


I20  now    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

the  tca-tablo,  and  had  heard  of  in  the  potatoes 
and  other  vegetables  of  which  lie  had  told  me. 

As  to  money  earnings  from  the  children, 
Holmes  told  me  what  hardly  surprised  me.  He 
said  that  all  up  and  down  the  valley,  within 
three  miles  of  him  on  either  side,  the  farmers, 
real  farmers,  would  hire  his  boys  for  quite  as 
much  as  the  woollen  mills  would  pay  them,  at 
several  points  between  April  and  November, 
and  that  he  had  rather  let  them  go  to  such 
work,  for  a  week  or  two  at  a  time,  than  keep 
them  in  the  mills.  "That  is  what  we  gain," 
said  he,  "  by  building  up  these  truck  farms,  as, 
in  fact,  our  whole  system  of  manufacture  does. 
Somebody  must  raise  the  milk  and  poultry  and 
vegetables  for  the  people  at  work,  not  only  here, 
but  at  Wentworth  and  at  every  mill  along  this 
stream.  You  cannot  import  all  that  food  as 
readily  as  you  can  flour  and  beef.  And  it  ends 
in  a  set  of  farms,  —  well,  you  Western  men 
would  not  call  them  farms,  but  we  do,  —  which 
supply  these  needs.  Now  there  are  times  when 
these  farmers  need  extra  work,  and  a  good  deal 
of  it,  and  then  comes  the  chance  for  my  boys. 
So  they  learn  two  trades,  —  and  that  is  what 
every  man  ought  to  do.  Who  is  it  that  says 
every  man  must  have  a  vocation  and  an  avoca- 
tion ?  " 

"  But  you  do  not  make  Mr.  Freeman  under- 


CHILDREN  S   WORK.  121 

Stand  the  real  secret  of  success,"  said  Mrs. 
Holmes,  "  unless  you  tell  him  that  we  own  this 
place,  and  do  not  hire  it." 

"  Oh,  I  told  him  that,"  said  her  husband,  "  in 
my  long  lecture  to  him  before  tea." 

She  said  that  she  could  illustrate  the  distinc- 
tion by  telling  me  one  thing.  "  Here  is  this  vine, 
which  you  call  so  pretty,  which  is  indeed  the 
glory  of  the  front  of  the  house.  When  we  came 
here,  this  piazza  was  as  bare  and  ugly  as  any 
which  would  be  found  in  New  England.  Now,  if 
we  had  hired  the  house,  I  should  have  spent 
twenty-five  cents  for  five  papers  of  seeds.  I 
should  have  bought  morning-glories,  and  cypress- 
vine,  and  what  they  call  cucumber-vine,  and  coboea, 
and  perhaps  some  scarlet  runners.  You  see  I 
should  have  wanted  to  cover  the  front  as  quickly 
as  I  could.  Instead  of  this,  so  soon  as  I  knew  I 
was  to  stay  here,  I  sent  to  Mr.  Misho's  for  this 
one  root  of  Dutchman's  pipe,  and  paid  my  quarter 
of  a  dollar  for  that.  That  was  years  ago.  But 
my  piazza  is  more  and  more  comfortable  every 
summer,  with  no  cost  to  anybody,  while  all  my 
morning-glories,  and  annuals  would  have  been 
cut  down  by  the  first  hard  frost.  I  should  have 
saved  my  seeds,  but  I  should  have  had  to  begin 
again  every  year." 

Her  husband  listened,  with  a  sort  of  pride  for 
the  exact  fitness  of  the  parable,  and  said  that 


122  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

that  instance  did  tell  the  whole  story.  "  And 
Clarinda  isn't  selfish,"  he  said,  laughing ;  "she 
isn't  half  so  selfish  as  the  rest  of  us  are.  She 
would  simply  be  doing  her  duty  in  buying  her 
annuals.  For,  if  she  lived  in  a  hired  house,  of 
course  it  would  be  her  duty  to  make  it  look 
pretty  as  soon  as  she  could,  —  in  six  hours,  if 
she  could,  or,  if  not  so,  in  six  weeks.  For  my 
part,  when  she  sent  for  her  Dutchman,  I  sent 
for  a  Catawba  vine.  I  bought  a  wheelbarrow 
load  of  leather  clippings  from  old  Soule  around 
the  corner,  and  treated  my  land  with  them. 
Step  round  and  see  the  vine  with  me,"  he  said. 
"I  feed  it  with  waste  from  the  butcher's  four 
times  every  summer,  and  now  look  there." 

He  pointed  up  with  pride  to  the  magnificent 
clusters  of  grapes,  such  clusters  as  civilized  man 
has  always  taken  as  the  noblest  type  of  plenty 
and  luxury.  "There,"  said  Holmes,  "who  does 
better  than  that .-'  In  theory,  you  know,  I  ought 
to  send  to  Ohio  or  New  York  for  those,  and  pay 
for  them  in  our  goods.  But,  once  in  a  while,  I 
am  not  sorry  to  upset  Adam  Smith  in  a  good 
exception.  My  boys  made  all  that  trellis,  they 
will  pick  all  the  grapes,  and  they  will  eat  most 
of  them  ;  there  are  nearly  two  hundred  clusters 
in  all.  But,  after  all,  these  are  only  the  orna- 
ments. The  real  breadwinner  of  the  place  is 
the    hennery   yonder,    with    its    machinery   for 


children's  work.  123 

hatching  out  the  Httle  chicks."  And  so  we  re- 
turned to  the  piazza. 

Then  there  followed  a  long  conversation 
which  I  will  not  try  to  repeat.  Holmes  insisted 
that  the  sunshine  and  rain  on  a  man's  place  was 
a  part  of  his  wealth,  which  he  must  invest  if  he 
could.  Then  he  said  that  the  muscle  and 
strength  and  skill  of  the  children  was  another 
part  of  a  man's  wealth,  which  must  be  used,  if 
they  were  not  hurt  in  the  using.  But  then  he 
fell  into  a  more  serious  vein. 

"  I  will  not  pretend,  Mr.  Freeman,  that  these 
profit  and  loss  reasons  are  the  real  reasons  why 
I  bring  up  my  children  so.  These  are  only  my 
justifications  after  the  fact,  as  the  lawyers  would 
say.  You  are  a  Christian  man,  I  hope,  and  I 
try  to  be  another.  I  can  say  to  you,  then,  what 
perhaps  I  would  not  say  at  the  street  corner,  — 
that  I  want  these  children  of  mine  to  grow  up 
as  children  of  God ;  sure  of  His  presence,  and 
happy  in  His  love.  I  have  a  notion  that  if  they 
are  in  the  open  air,  they  feel  His  presence,  and 
see  His  work  ;  that  He  seems  near  to  them,  and 
they  feel  near  to  Him.  Anyway,  they  are  with 
their  mother  more,  and  that  is  the  best  thing 
that  can  happen  to  them,  for  we  do  not  have 
our  children  any  too  long.  And  if,  in  this  open- 
air  life,  healthy  and  free,  they  do  grow  up  happy 
and  good,  why,  that  is  the  whole  thing.     You 


124  ^'*^^^'    T'lKY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

and  I  must  not  be  counting  coppers  or  adding 
up  columns  of  figures,  to  find  out  whether  one 
plan  is  better  than  another.  If  it  is  better  for 
them,  that  is  all." 

And  as  we  went  into  the  house,  after  I  had 
bidden  good  by  to  his  wife  and  the  older  chil- 
dren, he  said,  with  a  good  deal  of  feeling,  "  It 
troubles  me  a  good  deal  that  the  men  who  make 
laws,  and  the  men  who  write  books,  speak  as  if 
they  thought  that  a  little  more  profit  or  a  lit- 
tle more  product  was  the  important  thing.  Of 
course  they  do  not  think  so.  Of  course  every 
one  wants  more  life,  —  health  instead  of  sick- 
ness, happiness  instead  of  misery,  strength 
instead  of  weakness.  A  Christian  state  cares  for 
its  people,  and  does  not  care,  except  for  them, 
for  its  things." 


CHAPTER   VII. 


THE    SCHOOL. 


I  REMINDED  Spinner  one  day  that  he  had 
promised  to  show  me  something  of  the  school 
arrancrements,  and  he  said  that  if  I  were  willing 
to  take  a  walk,  we  would  both  go  down  to  the 
school-house,  and  stop  on  our  way  to  find  Miss 
Stevens,  who  was  their  teacher  at  that  moment, 
and  had  been  for  more  than  a  year.  We  found 
an  intelligent,  wide-awake  woman,  perhaps  thirty- 
five  years  old,  with  a  little  of  the  firmness  and 
regularity  which  comes  on  people  who  have  kept 
a  school  for  seventeen  years,  interested  in  her 
work,  and  willing  to  talk  about  it.  She  said  she 
would  take  her  keys  with  her,  and  show  us  the 
school-house,  though  there  was,  on  the  whole, 
very  little  to  show. 

They  were  District  13  in  a  large  township, 
and  the  general  school-committee  of  the  town 
had  found  it  was  well  to  let  them  carry  on  things 
after  a  rather  exceptional  way.  The  district 
committee  ii\  New  England  has  very  large  powers, 
and  does  very  much  as  it  chooses,  and  particu- 
larly if  one  member  of  the  district  committee 


126  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

is  a  member  of  the  general  town  committee,  the 
town  committee  does  not  mucli  interfere  with 
the  plans  of  the  district,  so  only  the  work  required 
under  the  statute  of  the  state  is  done.  There 
is  no  general  law  as  to  hours,  there  is  no  general 
law  as  to  the  number  of  weeks  which  the  school 
shall  be  kept  open ;  all  the  law  requires  is  that 
there  shall  be  a  school  every  winter  and  a  school 
every  summer,  with  a  certain  minimum  beneath 
which  no  district  must  fall,  or  indeed  would  be 
permitted  to  fall,  in  the  general  state  of  public 
opinion.  These  people  at  Hampton  more  than 
complied  with  the  letter  of  the  law,  and  Miss 
Stevens  assured  me  that  their  results  were  quite 
as  satisfactory  as  she  had  found  in  places  where 
the  schools  were  kept  on  a  more  conventional 
footing. 

The  school-house  was  the  old  school-house 
which  they  had  found  there,  —  a  perfectly  sim- 
ple building,  which  might  have  cost  a  couple  of 
hundred  dollars  to  build,  with  one  large  room 
only,  and  a  little  anteroom,  in  which  the  boys 
and  girls  hung  up  their  coats  and  cloaks,  and 
where  they  left  their  overshoes.  But  I  noticed 
that  she  or  somebody  had  ornamented  it  prettily 
with  chromos  and  other  pictures ;  they  had  a  very 
good  set  of  school  maps  hanging  upon  the  walls, 
and  the  general  aspect  of  the  place  was  cheerful. 
I  also  noticed  that  the  platform  at  the  farther 


THE    SCHOOL.  12/ 

end  of  the  room  was  rather  higher  than  I  should 
have  made  it.  But  I  asked  no  questions,  knowing 
that  "the  dumb  man's  borders  still  increase." 

Miss  Stevens  said  that  she  had  very  little  to 
explain,  and,  indeed,  very  little  to  show.  She 
took  me  to  the  end  of  the  room  opposite  the 
platform,  and  threw  open  a  half  closet,  half  cup- 
board, which  was  there,  and  I  saw  in  a  moment 
that  it  was  a  sort  of  alcove,  in  which  they  had 
stored  a  great  many  books,  —  I  should  think 
more  than  a  thousand.  This,  she  said,  was  the 
school  library ;  or,  if  I  choose  to  call  it  so,  a  pub- 
lic library.  Mr.  Spinner  would  tell  me  where 
they  got  the  money  for  it,  and  who  had  the 
books.  Then  she  said,  laughing,  that  she  was 
not  only  the  schoolmistress,  but  she  was  libra- 
rian of  the  library.  She  opened  another  closet, 
and  there  I  saw  were  crowded  in  two  or  three 
tables,  which,  she  told  me,  were  the  reading- 
room  tables ;  and  she  explained  to  me  how  they 
could  be  brought  out,  and  arranged  so  as  to  cover 
up  the  desks  of  her  school-children,  and  serve 
her  for  a  reading-room  in  the  evening  of  some 
of  the  winter  months,  when  the  schoolroom  was 
open  for  the  purpose.  "  The  school-house  has 
to  *  pay  a  double  debt,'  "  she  said ;  "and  it  is  now 
opera  house,  now  schoolroom,  now  library,  and 
now  reading-room.  I  am  retained  by  these  gen- 
tlemen in  the  four  capacities  of  mistress  of  amuse- 


128  now    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

ments,  director  of  reading,  librarian,  and  school- 
mistress. One  of  your  wise  men  says  that  every 
one  should  have  a  vocation  and  an  avocation  and 
a  'third.'  I  not  only  have  a  third,  but  I  have  a 
fourth.  But,  as  another  wise  man  says,  I  make 
one  hand  wash  another,  and  really  the  boys  and 
girls  are  very  good  assistants.  There  is  nothing 
a  bright  boy  likes  better  than  to  be  told  that  he 
may  help  in  the  library,  and  there  is  nothing 
that  gives  him  more  self-respect  than  to  be  put 
upon  some  committee  in  charge  of  the  news- 
papers or  magazines  in  the  reading-room." 

I  listened,  well  pleased,  for  the  little  woman 
was  now  talking  to  me  on  what  is  rather  a  favora- 
ble topic  of  my  own,  and  I  began  asking  her  a 
librarian's  questions,  and  other  questions  which 
would  hardly  occur  to  a  person  who  had  not  had 
in  hand  a  set  of  duties  which  I  have  had  half  my 
life,  but  which,  with  the  reader,  need  not  be 
spoken  of.  I  found  that  she  was  in  no  sort 
above  her  business  ;  on  the  other  hand,  she  was 
well  disposed  to  magnify  her  office,  and  she  gave 
me  some  very  good  hints  in  administration. 
But  as  to  the  sinews  of  war,  as  to  the  way  in 
which  the  money  was  collected  and  disbursed 
which  all  these  various  enterprises  demanded, 
she  always  referred  me  to  Mr.  Spinner. 

"  But  if  your  heart  is  in  it,"  she  said,  "  and  if 
the  people  you  work  for  are  sympathetic,  as  the 


THE    SCHOOL.  1 29 

people  are  for  whom  I  work,  the  thing  does  not 
require  as  much  money  as  people  imagine,  or  as 
it  requires  on  paper;  —  no,  not  nearly  as  much 
as  it  requires  when  you  work  from  above  below, 
as  I  have  seen  such  work  done,  when  liberal 
people  and  generous  people  were  condescending 
to  improve  and  level  up  another  kind  of  people. 
With  us,  nobody  is  condescending;  we  are,  if 
you  please,  a  little  selfish.  It  very  soon  appears 
that  it  is  easier  to  have  one  of  Trollope's  novels 
answer  the  purpose  of  twenty  of  us,  or  one  or 
two  copies  of  Harper  s  answer  the  purpose  of  a 
large  circle  of  readers,  than  if  everybody  were 
selfishly  keeping  the  book  or  the  magazine  at 
his  own  house  and  occasionally  lending  it.  Very 
soon,  after  a  year  or  two,  the  bound  volumes  of 
the  magazines  became  books  of  the  very  first 
interest  to  children.  All  children  like  to  follow 
up  a  series  of  bound  magazines.  They  like  it 
rather  more  than  they  like  anything  else.  In- 
deed, Mr.  Freeman,  the  difficult  point  with  a 
public  library  is  at  the  beginning.  The  old  prov- 
erb is  certainly  true  there.  Somehow  it  hap- 
pens that  the  first  five  hundred  books  you  buy 
are  infallibly  stupid  books.  They  are  the  'books 
which  no  gentleman's  library  should  be  with- 
out,' but  which  might  as  well  be  manufactured 
out  of  wood  and  leather,  and  nailed  up  perma- 
nently on  the  shelves.     It  is  not  until  you  have 


130  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

done  with  the  '  standard  books,'  and  begin  to 
suj^ply  people  with  the  every-day  literature  of 
the  time,  that  they  begin  to  understand  that  it 
is  worth  while  to  go  to  the  library,  and  the  time 
when  they  understand  that  it  is  worth  while  to 
support  the  library  is  even  later.  But  when 
they  have  once  tasted  blood,  there  is  nothing 
about  which  a  community  is  so  unanimous  as  it 
is  in  the  support  of  its  library.  Here  I  make 
them  bring  me  everything.  I  make  the  man 
who  comes  up  on  the  train  bring  me  the  New 
York  Herald  or  Tribune  of  that  day,  that  I  may 
have  it  on  the  table  of  my  reading-room.  We 
cannot  afford  to  subscribe  for  half  a  dozen  dailies. 
But  really,  there  is  not  a  night  when  one  of  my 
boys  cannot  pick  up  a  daily  at  the  station  as 
the  train  passes  us,  or  some  one  does  not  bring 
it  in  here.  Our  files  would  not  be  very  uniform, 
but  we  are,  all  the  same,  supplied  with  some- 
thing, and  if  people  read  journals  of  half  a  dozen 
schools  in  politics,  why,  it  is  none  the  worse  for 
them.  In  the  same  way,  we  have  most  of  our 
magazines, — not  all;  some  we  subscribe  for; 
but  I  encourage  people  to  send  their  magazines 
to  me  as  soon  as  they  have  done  with  them.  I 
promise  them  that  we  will  bind  them,  and,  after 
a  fashion,  we  do  bind  them,  though  you  would 
think  it  is  rather  homely  binding.  I  have  taught 
the  girls  to  do  that.     And  the  consequence  of  all 


THE    SCHOOL.  I3I 

this  is,  if  you  should  come  in  here,  after  the  first 
of  October,  or  before  the  first  of  May,  you  would 
find,  every  evening,  that  my  tables  are  out,  that 
my  periodicals  are  on  the  tables,  and  that  this 
little  room  is  quite  as  full  as  it  will  hold,  of  peo- 
ple who  have  come  in  here  to  read.  Indeed,  last 
year,  I  was  obliged  to  establish  a  branch,  of  which 
Mr.  Spinner  will  tell  you,  at  the  other  end  of  the 
village,  because  we  were  overcrowded  here." 

All  this  entertained  me,  because  it  fell  in  with 
various  plans  of  my  own,  which  had  had  more  or 
less  success  in  various  localities.  Then  I  asked 
her  about  the  school  hours,  and  the  extent  to 
which  she  carried  her  scholars.  "As  to  that," 
replied  Miss  Jane  Stevens,  "  the  committee  is 
good-natured,  and  leave  me  very  much  to  my 
own  devices.  When  I  came  here,  I  found  that 
the  school  had  been  very  small,  and,  in  fact,  be- 
fore our  mill  was  established,  hardly  anybody 
lived  in  these  houses,  and  very  few  of  those  peo- 
ple who  did  live  here  had  any  children.  I  had 
kept  school  in  factory  villages  before.  The  gen- 
eral object  in  most  of  them  is  to  crowd  the 
children  through  the  thirteen  weeks  which  are 
required  by  law,  so  that  they  may  have  the 
other  nine  months  to  work  in  the  mills  ;  and  the 
pressure  of  the  parents  on  the  committee,  or, 
generally,  of  the  directors  of  the  mills,  is  the 
same  way.     Then  we  are  a  good  deal  pressed 


132  now    THEV    LIVKU    IX    HAMPTON. 

and  embarrassed  often,  because  the  parents  are 
very  anxious  to  get  our  certificate  that  the  chil- 
dren have  worked  through  the  thirteen  weeks, 
and  frequently  they  ask  for  the  certificate  before 
they  have  any  right  to  it.  Then,  if  you  refuse 
the  certificate,  you  get  into  hot  water,  and  alien- 
ate that  family,  and  perhaps  their  neighbors. 

"  We  have  none  of  this  difficulty  here.  Mr. 
Spinner  will  tell  you  how  soon  he  and  his 
friends  determined  that  they  would  not  have 
any  children  working  in  the  mills  who  were  not 
sixteen  years  old.  I  suppose  that  determination 
made  them  trouble,  but  it  gave  me  great  joy.  I 
did  not  insist  upon  what  you  would  call  a  city 
school.  I  was  perfectly  willing  to  fall  into  the 
habit  of  all  the  country  districts  here,  in  having 
only  a  winter  school  or  a  summer  school ;  al- 
though Mr.  Spinner  was  kind  enough,"  she  said, 
nodding  to  him  and  smiling,  "to  let  me  have 
my  own  way  in  that  regard.  But  I  did  say  that 
I  should  like  to  have  the  school  open  for  thir- 
teen full  weeks  in  the  winter,  and  that  I  should 
like  to  have  it  open  for  thirteen  full  weeks  in 
the  summer.  I  ought  to  explain  to  you,  that  I 
had  made  an  agreement  that  I  would  not  teach 
anywhere,  else,  and  that  my  salary  was  fixed  to 
run  from  the  first  of  January  to  the  last  of  De- 
cember, so  that  I  was  to  arrange  the  school  as  I 
thought  it  best  for  me  and  for  the  community. 


THE    SCHOOL.  1 33 

I  do  not  think  that  I  was  selfish  in  the  matter. 
There  were  reasons  why  it  would  have  been 
an  advantage  to  me  to  have  had  the  school 
open  for  forty  weeks  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
I  was  interested  in  Mr.  Spinner's  plans  and 
Mr.  Workman's  plans ;  gradually  I  became  ac- 
quainted with  the  men  and  women  who  work  in 
the  mill,  and  if  I  were  to  do  it  over  again,  and 
establish  such  schools  as  I  wanted  in  the  vil- 
lages up  and  down  this  river,  I  would  not  ask 
for  more  than  twenty-six  weeks'  work  out  of  the 
fifty-two,  for  these  boys  and  girls. 

"  I  did  think,  and  I  said  so  to  these  gentle- 
men, that  as  we  have  a  good  many  people  who 
had  not  had  all  the  school  training  that  they 
could  use  to  advantage,  that  it  would  be  a  good 
thing  to  open  the  school-house  here  for  an  even- 
ing school  during  three  or  four  of  the  winter 
months.  I  said  that  if  they  were  willing  to  do 
that,  I  would  be  here  from  half-past  six,  when 
supper  is  always  over,  to  half-past  nine.  I  said 
that  I  would  not  undertake  more  pupils  than  I 
could  manage,  but  that  I  thought,  with  the  help 
that  I  could  find,  which  need  not  cost  a  great 
deal,  we  could  manage  perhaps  as  many  as  forty 
pupils  in  the  evening.  In  point  of  fact,  we  had 
an  average  of  about  thirty-five,  and  that  is  the 
way  in  which  my  time  is  divided. 

"There  is  an  evening  school,  which  runs  for 


134  Jl*^^^'*'    1'H1-V    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

two  months  late  in  the  autumn.  There  is  a  reg- 
uhir  winter  sehool,  which  runs  three  months. 
There  is  an  evening  school,  which  runs  for  two 
months  more  in  the  end  of  winter  and  in  the 
spring ;  then  what  they  call  the  summer  school 
comes  in  in  the  end  of  May,  and  in  June  and 
July  ;  and  for  the  rest  there  are  the  holi- 
days." 

"  Tell  Mr.  Freeman  about  your  Mutual  Im- 
provement Society,"  said  Mr.  Spinner. 

"  I  wanted  to  tell  him  about  that,"  Miss  Jane 
Stevens  said,  "but  I  think  I  had  a  little  rather 
that  he  should  see  it  first,  and  I  wonder  if  you 
cannot  bring  him  around  this  evening.  They 
do  not  meet  here  to-night.  They  are  going  to 
give  a  sort  of  exhibition  at  the  other  hall.  Bring 
him  to  that,  if  he  is  willing  to  sit  through,  and 
let  him  see  what  we  do  with  our  native  talent 
here.  After  the  exhibition  is  over,  I  will  tell 
him  something  of  the  detail  of  its  manage- 
ment." 


Accordingly,  at  tea-time  in  the  evening,  it 
was  announced  that  Mr.  Spinner  and  I  were 
going  to  the  evening  entertainment  provided  by 
the  society,  and  Mrs.  Spinner  and  two  or  three 
of  the  older  children  went  with  us.  We  walked 
up  the  village  street,  and  saw  that  other  people 
were  doing  the  same,  to  the  church,  and  here  I 


THE    SCHOOL.  135 

found  that  the  entertainment  was  to  be  given  in 
the  large  vestry  of  the  church,  which  occupied 
the  whole  floor  of  the  building,  and  into  which 
we  descended  by  a  few  steps,  —  the  floor  of  the 
vestry  being  perhaps  three  feet  below  the  sur- 
face of  the  ground.  The  room  was  not  very 
high,  but  not  so  low  but  what  we  could  hear  and 
see  easily.  It  was  prettily  decorated  by  well- 
chosen  prints,  and  a  nice  frieze  of  well-drawn 
pictures  illustrating  the  parables  ran  all  round 
it  just  below  the  wall.  I  observed,  as  soon  as  I 
went  in,  that  some  forty  seats  were  reserved  in 
front.  For  the  rest,  the  hall  perhaps  seated  a 
hundred  people  more,  and  these  seats  were  all 
taken  before  eight  o'clock.  The  announcement 
had  been  that  the  exercises  would  begin  at  five 
minutes  after  eight,  and  in  a  moment  I  saw  the 
reason  for  this  announcement.  Those  of  the 
factory  hands  who  chose  to  come,  and  who 
were  not  released  till  eight  o'clock,  had  thronged 
across  directly  from  their  work  at  the  mill,  ap- 
parently choosing  to  postpone  their  supper  until 
after  the  entertainment  was  over,  and  they  oc- 
cupied the  seats  which  had  been  reserved  for 
them.  So  soon  as  they  were  all  in,  the  exercises 
of  the  evening  began. 

A  young  man,  who  I  should  not  think  was 
more  than  twenty-one  years  old,  stepped  for- 
ward and  made   a  bow  and  said,   "  Ladies   and 


1^6  now    TllF.Y    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON, 

gentlemen,  we  have  a  programme  of  unusual  in- 
terest to  offer  you  this  evening.  You  will  see 
that  preparations  have  been  made  for  a  scientific 
experiment," — and  he  turned  and  pointed  to 
rather  a  large  trough  which  he  had  by  his  side. 
"  At  the  last  meeting  of  the  philosophical  sec- 
tion, Mr.  St.  John  was  appointed  to  tell  us 
why  ice  floats  upon  water,  and  he  has  pre- 
pared one  or  two  experiments  which  will  illus- 
trate this." 

At  once  a  young  man  stepped  up  from  the 
floor,  and  brought  his  block  of  ice  with  him  in  a 
basket,  showed  how  high  it  floated,  and  then, 
with  various  tubs  and  pumps  and  other  appa- 
ratus, proceeded  to  give  some  simple  informa- 
tion as  to  the  properties  of  air  and  water,  and 
what  would  happen,  and  what  would  not  hap- 
pen, etc.,  in  such  a  way  as  to  interest  his  audi- 
ence, and  certainly  teach  some  of  them  some- 
thing which  they  did  not  know  before.  His 
statement  was  very  short,  and  Mr.  Spinner  told 
me  that  no  person  was  permitted  to  occupy 
more  than  five  minutes,  no  matter  if  he  had  to 
demonstrate  the  most  elaborate  truths  known  to 
science.  He  was  cordially  applauded  when  he 
had  done,  and  withdrew,  leaving  his  ice  floating 
upon  the  water.  The  president  again  stepped 
forward,  consulted  his  paper,  and  said,  "  Two  of 
the  young  ladies   will  favor   us   with   a   duet." 


THE    SCHOOL.  13/ 

Two  nice  girls  came  up  on  the  platform,  their 
music  was  already  ready  for  them  on  the  piano, 
and  they  played  sufficiently  well  a  duet  from 
Mercadante. 

"  Mr.  John  Graham  will  read  an  anecdote." 
Mr.  John  Graham  proved  to  be  an  old  Scotch- 
man, I  should  think  sixty  years  old.  He  came 
up  with  a  book  in  his  hand,  and  said  he  was 
going  to  read  a  story,  which  should  not  have 
been  called  an  anecdote,  by  Fontenelle.  I  do 
not  know  where  he  found  it ;  I  had  never  heard 
it  before,  and  I  never  heard  it  since,  but  it  was 
one  of  Fontenelle's  nice  little  stories,  with  a 
clever  moral.  It  was  read  in  a  very  pathetic 
way,  and  held  the  audience  for  Mr.  John  Gra- 
ham's five  minutes.  And  so  this  "  variety  enter- 
tainment "  went  on,  without  the  slightest  pause 
or  breakdown.  Sometimes  the  contributions 
were  made  by  little  children  of  seven  years 
old,  sometimes  by  their  fathers  or  their  grand- 
fathers. They  passed  from  grave  to  gay,  or 
from  gay  to  grave,  with  apparently  no  prevision 
nor  arrangement  of  contrast  or  similarity,  but  by 
the  mere  accident  which  had  placed  them  upon 
the  programme.  But  what  was  important  was, 
that  they  interested  the  audience,  they  were  curi- 
ously suggestive,  and  they  must  have  started  con- 
versation and  thought,  as  hardly  any  elaborate 
lecture  could  have  done. 


138  HOW    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

I  could  not  make  Spinner  understand  how 
curious  I  thought  the  whole  thing.  He  did  not, 
indeed,  look  at  it  quite  as  I  did.  He  looked  at 
it  rather  as  something  of  course,  which  had 
grown  up  quite  naturally  out  of  the  exercises  at 
the  Sunday-school,  and  out  of  the  school  exhibi- 
tions. He  gave  Miss  Jane  Stevens  the  principal 
credit  of  it,  and,  after  it  was  over,  she  walked 
home  with  us,  and  I  tried  to  make  her  give  me 
some  idea  of  the  way  in  which  all  these  people  had 
been  brought  to  be  their  own  teachers  and  their 
own  entertainers  upon  a  public  stage.  She  said 
that  she  did  not  think  anybody  had  planned 
these  entertainments,  but  that  they  had  grown 
up  simply  enough  out  of  a  little  society  of 
boys  and  girls,  which  had  formed  itself  when 
these  young  people  were  all  five  years  younger 
than  they  were  now.  They  had  had,  as  most 
villages  had,  the  usual  run  of  fourth-rate  lectur- 
ers coming  up  and  charging  money  for  their 
entertainments,  till  they  had  got  tired  of  such 
things.  She  was,  in  the  meanwhile,  trying  to 
interest  them  in  the  reading-room  and  in  the 
library,  but  she  found  that  they  wanted  to  get 
together  ;  they  wanted  to  have  a  chance  to  talk 
and  to  walk  home  together,  and  she  had  pro- 
posed that  there  should  be  two  or  three  little 
entertainments,  conducted  by  themselves,  at  the 
end  of  every  evening.     But  it  proved  that  it  was 


THE    SCHOOL.  139 

much  easier  to  arrange  for  a  field  meeting  of  the 
society  once  a  fortnight  than  it  was  to  be  get- 
ting up  Httle  separate  entertainments  more  fre- 
quently, and  gradually  the  thing  had  assumed 
the  shape  which  I  saw.  Of  course,  those  who 
could  sing  had  a  certain  commodity  which  they 
could  always  offer  at  these  entertainments  ;  but 
it  was  her  business,  and  the  business  of  the 
other  leaders  of  the  society,  to  find  out  what 
contribution  other  people  could  bring  in.  The 
men  of  a  more  mechanical  gift  were  rather 
pleased  if  something  which  they  had  read  in 
the  Scientific  American,  or  in  the  other  jour- 
nals, could  be  made  of  use  to  their  fellow  work- 
men. Occasionally,  a  stranger  was  at  hand ; 
but,  generally  speaking,  she  had  found  that 
strangers  did  not  understand  their  audience  as 
well  as  they  understood  it  themselves.  A  dec- 
lamation always  interested  these  audiences,  but 
it  would  not  have  interested  them  if  it  had  been 
the  declamation  of  a  professional  reader  from 
the  outside ;  it  interested  them  because  they 
listened  to  theii  own  sons  or  their  own  daugh- 
ters. "And  in  short,"  said  Miss  Jane  Ste- 
vens, "  in  all  our  effort  to  provide  amusement 
for  our  winter  evenings,  there  is  nothing  on  the 
whole  which  is  so  popular  as  this  entertainment 
of  the  Mutual  Improvement  Society,  and  that  you 
may  guess,  now  that  you  see  it  in  the  autumn, 


140  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

and  if  I  tell  you  it  has  been  kept  up  throughout 
the  year.  For  the  rest,"  she  said,  "we  make 
quite  a  point  of  keeping  up  the  musical  training 
of  the  village.  When  I  say  we,  I  mean  I  and 
Mrs.  Spinner  and  Mrs.  Workman  and  the  doc- 
tor, and  two  or  three  other  people,  on  whom  the 
stress  of  the  effort  comes ;  but  with  every  year 
we  have  more  and  more  helpers.  Mr.  Spinner 
will  tell  you  that  we  have  quite  the  beginning  of 
a  little  band.  You  heard  how  well  those  two 
girls  played,  and  how  well  that  quartette  of  boys 
sang  ;  and  really,  last  winter,  our  six  or  eight 
concerts  were  not  only  a  pleasure  to  those  who 
heard,  but  were  really  creditable  to  the  perform- 
ers." I  asked  her  whether  I  had  now  found  out 
the  secret  of  the  high  platform  in  her  school- 
room, and  she  said  I  had.  She  said  that  when 
they  did  not  think  they  should  have  a  large 
audience,  the  children  felt  more  at  home  in 
the  schoolroom,  and  that  she  had  many  a  time 
met  small  companies  of  them  there,  when  they 
should  never  have  thought  of  announcing  an  en- 
tertainment in  the  vestry  of  the  church.  "  But 
here,"  said  she,  "we  can  act  charades,  we  can 
speak  dialogues,  we  can  tell  stories.  Why,  I 
have  read  them  half  the  Arabian  Nights  here, 
when  they  were  sewing  or  knitting,  or  the  boys 
were  drawing  at  the  table  yonder.  Indeed, 
they  are  never  more  pleased  than  they  are  to 


THE    SCHOOL.  I4I 

have  what  they  call  an  evening  in  the  school- 
house  ;  but  that  is  purely  an  informal  thing,  as 
they  might  meet  for  an  evening  party  at  Mr. 
Spinner's  house,  or  at  Mr.  Workman's." 


CHAPTER   VIII. 


HOURS    OF    WORK. 


MR.  SPINNER  explained  to  me  their  ex- 
periment about  the  hours  of  work  in  a 
long  conversation  of  which  I  took  full  notes  at 
the  time. 

"You  will  easily  see  that  matters  of  some  dif- 
ficulty under  any  other  system  of  management 
settle  into  matters  of  detail  with  us,  and  adjust 
themselves. 

"Workman  and  I  had  both  been  anxious  and 
interested  in  eight-hour  plans.  But  we  knew 
enough  to  know  that  if  one  state  in  America 
passed  an  eight-hour  law,  and  the  next  did  not, 
the  result  would  be  simply  the  driving  factories 
and  workmen  across  the  border,  and  that  no- 
body would  gain  anything.  So  that,  though  I 
have  agitated  a  good  deal  of  that  thing  in  gen- 
eral, I  had  never  seen  any  good  chance  in  detail. 
Our  system  here  differs  from  anything  I  had 
heard  of,  and  it  came  to  us,  as  such  things  do, 
rather  by  accident  than  studied  design. 

"I  was  in  New  York, —  it  was  in  April,  —  the 


HOURS    OF    WORK.  I43 

end  of  April, — and  I  met  a  jobber  there  whom  I 
had  not  seen  before,  a  Boston  man  named  Atkins. 
He  took  a  fancy  to  some  goods  he  had  bought 
from  an  agent  and  made  an  appointment  to  see 
me.  He  told  me  that  his  people,  —  some  tailors 
he  dealt  with,  —  liked  the  goods,  and  he  wanted 
to  know  how  large  a  lot  I  could  send  him  steadily 
for  six  months.  I  figured  on  it  a  little,  and  told 
him.  I  saw  he  was  disappointed,  —  a  little  an- 
noyed, I  thought.  It  was  the  first  intimation  he 
had  had  that  we  were  not  one  of  the  great  slam- 
bang  concerns,  to  whom  a  hundred  million  pieces 
are  nothing  at  all.  When  I  saw  this,  —  I  hated 
to  disappoint  a  good  customer,  —  I  said,  '  Either 
that, — or  twice  that.' 

"  He  asked  what  I  meant,  and  I  said  I  would 
light  up,  and  run  two  sets  of  hands. 

"  Well,  he  did  not  care  what  I  did.  If  I  had 
set  the  mill  afire,  he  would  not  have  cared,  so 
his  tailors  were  suited.  He  accepted  my  first 
price,  and  I  came  home  a  good  deal  fright- 
ened, to  tell  Workman  and  the  rest  what  I  had 
done.  I  do  not  run  this  mill  by  caucus.  No 
sir !  I  do  as  I  choose,  and  make  the  plans ;  and 
other  men  do  their  parts,  and  the  plans  come 
out  as  well  as  they  can.  But  this  time  I  did 
call  the  heads  of  rooms  into  my  counting-room, 
—  what  you  would  call  '  foremen,'  —  and  I  said 
that  we   had   a   chance   to   double   profit   if    we 


144  '"*^^'     T'lKV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

wou\d  double  work,  —  and  that  I  had  done  this 
thing.  But  I  said  that  I  hated  night  work. 
It  was  demorahzing ;  it  was  bad  for  the  men 
and  women  engaged  ;  and  the  work  itself  was 
bad  when  it  was  done.  I  said  that  if  we  had 
won  any  credit  with  these  unknown  tailors,  it 
had  been  by  doing  work  a  little  better  than 
other  people  did,  and  that  we  should  very  soon 
lose  that  credit  if  we  did  not  keep  up  to  the  stan- 
dard of  the  goods  they  had  received  from  us. 
Then  it  was,  that,  on  a  hint  from  one  of  the 
men,  we  tried,  rather  as  an  experiment,  the 
system  on  which  we  have  run  this  mill  ever 
since.  There  is  a  certain  freemasonry  about 
weavers  and  spinners.  They  know  of  other 
weavers  and  spinners,  just  as  jewellers  know  of 
other  jewellers,  and  printers  of  other  printers. 
I  gave  out  word  that,  beginning  with  a  fort- 
night from  the  next  Monday,  we  were  going 
for  the  summer  on  the  eight-hour  principle. 
At  the  same  time,  I  gave  out  word  that  the 
mill  would  open  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  that  the  people  who  came  to  work 
then  would  be  dismissed  at  twelve  for  that  day. 
There  was  not  to  be  any  cessation  of  the  work, 
however.  The  power  was  to  be  kept  on  and 
the  machinery  kept  running,  and  another  set 
of  hands  would  come  in  at  twelve  and  work 
till  eight  in  the  evening.     I  do  not  believe  the 


HOURS    OF    WORK.  I45 

thing  could  have  been  done  so  easily  in  a  large 
establishment  as  it  was  with  us.  But  the  men 
and  women  wrote  all  up  and  down  the  valley, 
to  friends  that  were  in  other  mills,  who  wanted 
to  make  an  easy  summer  of  it,  and  before  my 
fortnight  was  over,  I  had  people  enough  troop- 
ing in  here,  who  wanted  to  be  taken  on  this 
rather  luxurious  arrangement.  You  will  see 
yourself  that  the  trouble  is  in  the  inspection 
of  the  work  more  than  it  is  in  the  doing  of 
the  work.  Nobody  likes  to  be  responsible  for 
work  done  in  his  room,  of  which  he  did  not 
see  every  detail;  but  the  heads  of  rooms  man- 
aged that  after  a  fashion.  They  worked  much 
more  than  eight  hours,  and  they  had  head  men 
of  their  own,  whom  they  liked,  and  in  whom 
they  had  some  confidence,  whom  they  put  in 
charge  in  their  absence.  Then,  as  you  will 
easily  see,  under  our  principle,  where  each  man 
has  something  of  the  interest  of  an  owner,  there 
is  a  great  deal  more  mutual  oversight  than  there 
would  be  in  a  room  where  everything  was  cut- 
throat and  every  spinner  was  trying  to  do  as 
little  as  he  could,  so  he  could  only  be  paid  for 
doing  more.  Then  you  would  find  that  a  girl 
who  tended  a  frame,  made,  by  methods  known 
to  herself,  some  private  arrangement,  so  that 
another  girl  whom  she  knew, — perhaps  her 
sister   or   some  friend  of   hers,  somebody  who 


146  HOW    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

lived  in  the  same  house  with  her,  —  should 
tend  that  same  frame  in  the  afternoon.  There 
is  not  much  sentiment  about  a  spinning-frame, 
but  there  is  some,  and  a  girl  would  not  like  to 
come  in  in  the  morning  and  find  things  amiss, 
when  an  entire  stranger  had  been  running  her 
machine,  while  she  would  be  good-natured 
enough  about  it,  if  the  person  who  had  run  it 
was  her  own  protegee,  or  in  some  way  was  her 
friend. 

"So  it  was  that  for  that  summer  we  ran  this 
mill  sixteen  hours  where  we  had  run  it  ten 
hours  before.  It  did  not  quite  double  the  time, 
but,  in  truth,  although  it  did  not  quite  double 
the  work,  it  came  nearer  it  than  I  expected. 
We  had  not  the  difficulty  which  everybody 
told  me  we  should  have,  of  the  machinery  get- 
ting out  of  order,  because  nobody  was  responsi- 
ble for  it.  It  ended  in  our  holding  a  person 
responsible  for  a  piece  of  cloth  who  began 
that  piece.  This  was  not  strictly  fair,  but  it 
was  so  evident  that  there  must  be  some  rule 
about  it,  that  everybody  accepted  that  rule.  In 
point  of  fact,  the  cloth  stood  inspection  remark- 
ably well,  and,  after  a  little  fuss  at  the  begin- 
ning, I  never  found  that  anybody  pretended 
that  he  could  tell  the  difference  between  work 
which  was  done  in  the  afternoon  and  work  which 
was  done  in  the  morning,  or  vice  versa. 


HOURS    OF    WORK.  147 

"  I  suppose  there  was  a  difference,  but  it  was 
one  of  those  minute  kinds  of  differences  which 
you  lawyers  say  the  law  does  not  care  about. 
The  upshot  of  it  all  was  that  I  held  my  contract 
with  this  Boston  man,  who  has  been  one  of  our 
best  customers  ever  since. 

"  But  when  it  came  to  the  first  of  November, 
we  stopped  this  double  business.  In  the  first 
place,  our  contract  was  up,  and  in  the  second 
place,  I  and  Workman  and  all  the  best  heads  of 
rooms  were  resolute  that  we  would  not  have  any 
night  work.  Of  course,  by  the  first  of  Novem- 
ber, we  were  burning  a  good  deal  of  oil,  morning 
and  night,  —  that  was  before  we  got  in  our  elec- 
tric plant, — and  the  oil  was  an  expense.  It  hap- 
pened that  year  that  I  had  just  as  lief  run  light 
as  not.  I  was  satisfied  that  the  country  was 
making  more  goods  than  it  could  sell,  and  I  did 
not  want  to  be  found  with  an  overstock  in  the 
spring.  The  men  and  women  both  had  got  used 
to  the  eight  hours'  work,  arid  I  told  them  all  that 
I  proposed  to  try  as  an  experiment  to  run  this 
mill,  for  the  next  four  months,  at  only  eight 
hours'  time.  This  meant,  you  see,  beginning 
after  it  was  broad  daylight,  and  ending  at  sun- 
down, or  sometimes  before.  We  made  the  sav- 
ing in  oil,  which  is  something  ;  we  made  some 
saving,  I  suppose,  though  not  much,  in  fuel ;  and 
the  people  made  a  great  deal  of  saving  in  tem- 


148  now    TIIKV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

per.  I  lost  some  workmen,  —  there  is  no  doubt 
of  that.  Tliey  went  off  where  they  could  get 
more  money ;  for  practically,  all  our  people  are 
paid  by  the  piece,  and  of  course  a  man  cannot 
make  so  many  pieces  of  woollen  cloth  in  forty- 
eight  hours  as  he  can  in  sixty.  It  is  all  non- 
sense to  pretend  that  he  can.  But  he  makes 
more  than  forty-eight  sixtieths  ;  he  makes  more 
than  eight-tenths  of  it.  When  his  mind  is  set 
to  it,  and  he  is  determined  to  drive  things,  and 
he  has  time  to  keep  his  machinery  in  good  order, 
and  does  not  mind  staying  a  little  before  and 
after  work  to  see  to  that,  his  eight  hours  are 
worth  more  to  him  than  when  he  is  in  a  hurry 
to  leave  his  work  as  soon  as  it  is  done,  and  is 
only  eager  to  come  in  late  in  the  morning.  You 
will  say  that  this  is  an  advantage  which  wears 
off  after  people  have  been  used  to  the  eight- 
hours  system.  All  I  can  say  is,  it  does  not  wear 
off  with  us.  On  the  other  hand,  we  find  that 
these  people  regard  their  machinery  a  good  deal 
as  you  regard  a  horse  which  has  got  to  do  so 
much  work  for  you.  You  would  like  to  have 
the  horse  in  as  good  order  as  he  can  be  in,  and 
even  if  you  have  to  take  care  of  him  yourself, 
you  would  rather  do  that  than  have  him  fail 
you  when  you  are  in  the  saddle  or  going  over 
the  hills. 

"  What  we  have  settled  down  on,  then,  is  eight 


HOURS    OF    WORK.  I49 

hours'  time  from  the  first  of  November  to  the 
first  of  March  every  year,  and  during  tliat  period 
we  give  a  full  hour  for  dinner.  I  do  not  say 
that  the  people  would  like  it  all  the  year  round. 
I  think  that  in  the  summer  men  would  have  a 
feeling  that  they  were  wasting  time,  and  that 
they  would  leave  us,  and  go  off  to  places  where 
they  could  get  more  money  in  the  day  or  more 
money  in  the  week.  But  the  human  mind  is  so 
formed  that  people  do  like  variety.  It  is  just  as 
a  woman  wants  to  move  her  bedstead  once  in 
six  months,  and  is  sure  she  makes  more  room 
every  time  she  moves  it.  These  people  are 
glad  when  the  first  of  November  comes  and  the 
hours  of  work  are  radically  changed  ;  and  they 
are  just  as  glad  when  the  first  of  March  comes, 
and  they  are  changed  again.  It  gives  us,  as  you 
will  see,  a  good  chance  for  our  evening  school, 
of  which  we  make  a  good  deal  ;  and  it  gives  a 
good  chance  for  our  evening  entertainments, 
which  are  very  good  for  keeping  up  the  moral 
life  of  the  people.  It  throws  men  more  into  the 
library  and  reading-room  than  it  would  if  they 
were  tired,  and,  in  short,  I  think  it  a  very  good 
arrangement  for  the  summer,  and  I  am  disposed 
to  think  that  the  men  agree  with  me. 

"  I  wonder  if  you  remember  a  droll  paper  there 
is  of  Franklin's,  about  his  discovering  that  it 
was  light  in   Paris  three  or  four  hours  before 


150  now    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

people  got  out  of  bed.  I  remember  a  man  I 
knew,  who  went  to  Spain  on  business,  told  me 
how  much  surprised,  not  to  say  amused,  he  was 
when  he  saw,  in  the  city  of  Madrid,  the  masons 
were  at  work  before  five  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
on  a  house  opposite  his  hotel ;  and  he  saw  the 
other  side  of  it  when  he  saw  that  the  same 
masons  did  not  touch  a  brick  between  half-past 
eleven  in  the  middle  of  the  day  and  half-past 
three.  Well,  if  you  turn  out  with  fifty  or  sixty 
people,  as  I  have  done  again  and  again  now  for 
years,  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  just  when 
a  few  streaks  are  beginning  to  light  up  the 
eastern  sky,  it  may  be,  and  go  into  the  mill  with 
those  people,  and  all  get  to  work  just  as  it  is 
beginning  to  be  light  enough  to  go  to  work,  you 
have  a  little  that  same  feeling  that  my  friend 
had  in  Spain ;  you  have  a  little  of  the  feeling 
that  Franklin  describes  in  this  paper.  You  are 
a  little  surprised  to  know  that  you  are  at  work 
when  half  the  world  is  asleep,  and  you  do  not 
dislike  the  surprise.  Least  of  all  do  you  dislike 
it  when,  at  twelve  o'clock,  somebody  else  comes 
in  and  takes  your  work.  You  have  the  liberty 
of  a  marquis,  or  a  duke,  or  anybody  else.  You 
go  to  sleep  if  you  want  to  ;  you  can  read ;  you 
can  go  a-fishing.  I  daresay  you  have  met  some 
of  my  men  with  their  baskets  and  flies  upon  the 
streams  that  you  have  been  tracking.     It  does 


HOURS    OF    WORK.  I5I 

the  man  no  harm,  you  may  be  sure  of  that ;  and 
he  comes  home,  with  his  feet  wet,  if  you  please, 
and  pretty  tired,  quite  ready  to  go  to  bed  at  sun- 
down, or  before  sundown,  that  he  may  be  at  his 
work  at  four  in  the  morning. 

"There  is  no  doubt  that  with  the  men  and  the 
women  too,  the  early  rising  watch,  for  that  is 
what  we  call  them,  is  the  more  agreeable  of  the 
two ;  so  we  change  and  change  about  when 
Sunday  comes.  Watch  A,  as  it  is  called  on  our 
books,  has  the  morning  work  for  one  week,  and 
it  takes  the  afternoon  work  in  the  next  week. 
Then,  when  the  third  week  comes,  Watch  A  has 
the  morning  again,  and  in  the  fourth  week  it 
has  the  afternoon  again,  and  we  did  not  change 
this  order  of  watches  from  the  beginning  of  the 
season  till  the  end.  But  as  to  the  men  and 
women  in  the  watches,  they  have  a  good  deal  of 
liberty.  They  have  what  they  call  their  part- 
ners ;  by  which  I  mean  that  two  people,  as  I 
have  said,  are  in  some  sort  responsible  for  the 
same  frame  or  the  same  loom,  and  if  one  of 
those  partners  wants  a  half  day  off,  and  makes  a 
bargain  with  his  partner  to  run  for  him,  we  wink 
at  it,  if  you  choose  to  call  it  wink  at  it ;  we 
know  perfectly  well  that  it  is  done,  and  once  in 
a  long  while  we  permit  that  substitution.  I 
should  not,  if  I  were  the  head  of  a  room,  permit 
it   two   days   running.     Sixteen    hours'    work   is 


152  HOW    THF.Y    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

quite  too  much  to  be  done  two  days,  unless 
there  is  to  be  a  holiday  the  next  day.  But,  as 
you  know,  the  work  at  a  frame  or  at  a  loom  is 
not  so  much  physical  fatigue  as  it  is  a  certain 
kind  of  nervous  work ;  and  once  in  a  dog's  age 
such  a  thing  as  this  may  be  permitted,  though 
it  should  never  be  encouraged.  Now  all  this,  as 
you  will  see,  links  in  with,  and  has  direct  refer- 
ence to  the  system  of  schooling  which  we  have 
adopted  here,  which  is,  after  all,  largely  bor- 
rowed from  the  English  experience,  and  about 
which  you  had  better  talk  with  the  young  wo- 
men who  keep  the  schools. 

"  It  is  easy  to  see  how  the  footings  come  out 
from  these  rather  varied  hours.  104  days  of 
.winter,  at  8  hours  each,  give  832  hours'  work. 

"  For  the  eight  months  of  spring,  summer, 
and  autumn,  the  mills  do  twice  as  much  a 
day,  and  the  result,  of  course,  of  the  eight 
months,  is  four  times  that  of  the  winter,  or  832 
X  4,  equals  3328. 

"This  makes  4160  hours'  work  in  a  year, 
against  3100  hours  which  we  should  have  gained 
from  310  days'  work  on  a  ten-hour  system. 

"  The  law  of  this  state  restricts  us  to  ten 
hours,  and  if  it  did  not,  the  fact  that  other 
states  are  restricted  to  ten  hours  would  have 
amounted  to  the  same  thing.  In  the  long  run, 
you   cannot  keep  good  workmen  in  an  eleven- 


HOURS    OF    WORK.  153 

hour  mill,  when,  by  going  over  the  border,  they 
have  a  chance  to  work  in  a  ten-hour  mill.  It  is 
that  which  practically  settles  these  questions, 
though  there  can  be,  of  course,  under  our  con- 
stitution, no  national  legislation  on  the  subject. 
"  It  ought  to  be  understood,  indeed,  that  no 
state  constitution  gives  any  right  to  the  legisla- 
ture to  fix  the  hours  of  labor  for  any  man.  The 
arrangements  for  ten-hour  systems,  or  other 
such  systems,  are  made  practically  by  legislation 
for  the  benefit  of  children,  with  regard  to  whom 
it  is  supposed  that  the  legislature  is  omnipotent. 
When  an  eight-hour  law  is  passed,  as  it  has 
been  passed,  by  Congress,  it  is  simply  a  law  pro- 
viding that  men  who  work  for  the  government 
shall  work  only  for  eight  hours  in  every  twenty- 
four.  But  the  Bill  of  Rights  in  most  states 
would  be  enough  to  show  that  a  legislature  must 
not  interfere  with  the  right  of  a  man  to  sell  in 
market  his  own  labor,  and  as  much  of  it  as  he 
chooses,  I  say  this  merely  by  the  way.  It  is 
not  of  any  great  practical  effect,  because,  prac- 
tically, most  mills  want  to  employ  persons  who 
are  under  age,  and  if  those  persons  may,  or  in- 
deed must,  go  away  at  the  end  of  ten  hours,  the 
work  of  the  mill  is  so  far  deranged  that  it  can- 
not be  continued  for  eleven  hours.  This  is  the 
whole  of  our  ten-hour  statutes,  and  indeed  the 
same  is  true  with  regard  to  those  in  En<4:land. 


154  J^^'^^'    TIIEV    LIVED    IX    HAMPTON. 

"  But,  as  I  have  said,  our  arrangements  here 
were  wholly  independent  of  statute.  They  grevv 
up  in  the  incidental  way  which  I  have  described, 
but  which,  for  us  who  want  to  make  the  most 
out  of  this  plant  here,  —  that  is,  out  of  these 
buildings  and  this  machinery,  —  is,  as  you  can 
see,  very  great.  We  gain  thirty-three  per  cent  in 
product  out  of  the  same  amount  of  machinery. 
Our  work-people  are  satisfied,  and  if  they  are 
satisfied,  everybody  is  satisfied.  We  pay  by  the 
piece,  as  all  mills  do,  so  that  we  pay  no  more 
for  three  thousand  hours'  work  on  our  time  cal- 
endar than  if  we  were  carrying  the  same  three 
thousand  hours  over  more  months  in  the  year. 

"  Practically,  then,  we  are  able  to  deliver  more 
goods  in  a  year  than  we  were  able  to,  or  than 
we  should  be,  if  we  worked  on  a  ten-hour  sys- 
tem. We  are  also  using  our  machinery,  not  to 
the  full  top  of  its  work,  but  for  one-third  more 
than  we  should  be  otherwise,  and  this  gives  us 
so  far  forth  a  better  chance  to  be  even  with  the 
time.  It  is  a  great  thing  for  any  manufacturer 
to  work  with  the  newest  machinery  which  the 
progress  of  invention  affords,  and,  other  things 
being  equal,  there  is  therefore  a  certain  advan- 
tage in  wearing  out  a  frame  or  a  loom  in  three 
years  which  otherwise  would  have  run  four." 


CHAPTER   IX. 


THE    CHURCH. 


SUNDAY  came  around  while  I  was  at 
Hampton,  and  I  went  to  church  with  Mr. 
Spinner,  his  wife  and  family.  He  told  me  at 
breakfast  that  we  should  hear  the  Baptist  min- 
ister from  VVentworth,  who  was  coming  up  to 
take  the  morning  service  himself.  Mr.  Spinner 
spoke  with  pleasure  of  this  arrangement,  for  he 
said  I  should  be  pleased  with  the  sermon  and 
the  service,  and  he  hoped  that  this  gentleman 
would  come  first  and  dine  with  us.  "  He  has 
not  been  here,"  said  Mr.  Spinner,  "for  a  year  or 
two,  and  I  should  be  glad  to  show  him  some  of 
our  improvements.  He  is  a  man  who  is  much 
liked  in  the  whole  county,  and  it  is  rather  a 
matter  of  distinction  that  we  should  have  him  at 
our  little  church  here." 

He  then  told  me  of  the  basis  on  which  the 
church  had  arranged  itself,  and  seemed  to  be, 
on  the  whole,  well  pleased  that  they  had  been 
able  to  do  as  much  as  they  had  done,  although 
they  had  met  with  the  difficulties  inevitable 
where  there  are  people  coming  and  going  all  the 


156  HOW    TllKY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

time,  where  many  of  the  men  and  women  are,  if 
not  irrehgious,  quite  indifferent  to  reUgious  ar- 
rangements, and  where  the  whole  community  is 
so  small  that  unless  it  unite  together  in  some 
way  it  is  difficult  to  maintain  any  regular 
church  institution. 

"  When  we  came  here,"  he  said,  "  there  was 
no  place  of  worship  here  at  all.  There  is  a  Sec- 
ond-Advent meeting-house  three  or  four  miles 
down  the  road,  and  I  think  you  may  have  no- 
ticed, as  you  went  up,  a  meeting-house  which  is 
almost  never  used,  which  was  built  by  some 
Seventh-Day  Baptist  people  several  years  ago, 
when  they  had  a  revival  in  this  neighborhood. 
But  they  all  moved  away,  and  I  hardly  know 
whether  their  house  is  kept  in  repair  or  not.  At 
all  events,  it  was  too  far  away  from  us  for  us  to 
make  any  use  of  it.  In  truth,  one  of  the  reasons 
of  the  failure  of  the  enterprise  that  was  here 
before  us  was  that  our  village  was  not  large 
enough  to  maintain  a  church.  The  more  decent 
workmen  would  not  come  to  a  place  where  there 
was  no  church,  and  they  had  but  a  wretched  set 
of  hands  here  at  the  very  best.  The  quality  of 
their  work-people  alone  was  enough  to  break 
down  their  mills,  if  they  had  not  broken  down 
from  bad  management,  as  in  fact  they  did.  Af- 
ter we  were  established  here,  the  better  men, 
themselv^es,  felt  the  need  of  doing  something  for 


THE    CHUKCH.  I  5/ 

Sunday-school  or  a  place  of  worship,  in  many- 
instances  where  they  had  never  cared  for  such 
things  before.  Nothing  puts  a  man  so  much  on 
his  mettle  as  being  bodily  transplanted,  and  find- 
ing that  there  is  no  regular  occupation  for  Sun- 
day, even  if  he  have  not  been  a  regular  church 
member  himself,  and  affects  to  be  indifferent  to 
such  things.  The  Catholic  priest  at  Wentworth 
was  quite  willing  to  come  up  and  hear  confessions 
and  carry  on  a  service  once  in  a  month,  and  he 
did  so  in  the  school  building,  which  the  district 
committee  were  willing  to  let  him  have  for  this 
purpose.  Different  men  put  themselves  into 
communication  with  one  and  another  of  the 
ministers  at  Wentworth,  to  know  whether  some 
service  could  not  be  maintained,  perhaps  on 
Sunday  evening,  or  perhaps  in  the  afternoon, 
by  one  and  another  person  coming  up  the 
valley  from  there.  To  these  proposals  we 
had  all  sorts  of  answers,  as  we  always  would 
in  such  a  case,  but  it  seemed  to  me  that 
there  was  enough  of  a  necessity  made  out  for 
me  to  address  a  pretty  formal  letter  to  Mr. 
Nourse  on  the  subject,  and  that  letter  I 
accordingly  wrote. 

"  I  told  him  that  it  was  essential  to  a  good 
manufacturing  establishment  to  have  the  best 
workmen  and  not  the  wonst.  I  told  him  that 
we  should  never  have  the  more  decent  and  self- 


158  HOW    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

respecting  workmen,  if  there  were  these  difficul- 
ties about  worship.  I  told  him  that  it  seemed 
to  me  therefore  that  the  men  who  owned  this 
mill,  and  he  was  the  most  important  of  those 
men,  should  add  to  the  rest  of  their  plant  here 
a  church  or  meeting-house.  That  would  show 
the  men  that  they  employed  that  they  had  an 
interest  in  this  matter.  For  the  rest,  the  men 
they  employed  must  bear  out  the  American 
principle,  and  must  arrange  for  worship  as  best 
they  could  ;  but  that  I  thought  that,  without 
analyzing  the  matter  too  finely,  or  putting  too 
fine  a  point  upon  things,  it  was  the  business 
of  capital  to  provide  a  place  where  this  part  of 
the  work  of  a  manufacturing  town  should  be 
carried  on. 

"  I  got  a  very  curious  answer  from  Nourse. 
I  should  like  to  show  it  to  you.  He  reminded 
me  of  the  principle  which  had  been  laid  down 
in  the  beginning  ;  namely,  that  capital  was  to 
have  merely  what  we  would  call  'the  idiot's 
dividend,'  and  that  in  a  certain  sense  it  was 
entitled  to  that,  while  in  a  certain  sense  it  was 
not  entitled  to  anything  more.  *  Now,'  said  he, 
'we  have  waived  all  questions  of  sentiment  or 
mutual  affection  or  of  the  interest  of  mankind, 
which  you  choose  now  to  bring  up  when  you 
discuss  the  matter  of  a  church  edifice.  I  do 
not  mean  to  say  that  if,  half   an  hour  hence, 


THE    CHURCH.  I59 

a  man  comes  into  my  room,  and  takes  off  his 
hat,  and  asks  me  to  subscribe  for  building  a 
church  in  Honolulu  or  in  Texas,  I  may  not 
doit;  but  I  do  not  think  that  .that  man  must 
come  to  me  from  Hampton.  In  Hampton  I  am 
engaged  in  a  business  enterprise.  I  have  been 
told  that  this  business  enterprise  could  pay  me 
what  we  call  the  idiot's  dividend.  I  feel  safe, 
therefore,  about  refusing  to  mix  up  a  business 
enterprise  like  this  with  my  philanthropy.  If 
you,  and  the  men  who  are  at  work  with  you, 
really  think  that  a  church  is  as  much  a  part 
of  the  capital  stock  of  this  concern  as  is  the 
dyeing  vat,  you  ought  to  prove  this  by  your 
works.  I  own  some  dyeing  vats  in  your  mills, 
or  I  own  ninety-five  hundredths  of  them,  and 
on  my  property  in  those  vats  I  am  paid  four  per 
cent  interest.  I  will  put  up  for  you  in  Hamp- 
ton a  meeting-house  on  exactly  those  terms. 
It  shall  be  costly  or  inexpensive,  as  you  please. 
It  shall  be  a  handsome  church,  built  of  your 
own  stone  there,  by  the  best  architect  in  New 
York,  or  it  shall  be  built  of  rough-hewn  planks, 
slabs,  and  shingles,  just  as  you  please.  It  shall 
cost  fifty  thousand  dollars,  or  it  shall  cost  five 
hundred,  just  as  you  please ;  but  the  congrega- 
tion that  worship  in  it  on  Sunday,  and  the 
people  who  use  it  for  other  services  on  week 
days,  shall  pay  me  the  idiot's  dividend,  or  shall 


l6o  HOW    TllKV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

pay  the  proprietors  a  dividend,  exactly  as  they 
pay  them  on  the  dyeing  vats.' 

"  He  said  we  might  keep  this  offer  open  for 
two  months,  and  he  would  be  bound  by  it  at  the 
end  of  the  time. 

"  I  read  this  aloud  at  a  meeting  which  we 
held  in  the  store  to  consider  it.  All  the  men 
were  pleased  with  it,  or  almost  all  of  them  were. 
They  said  it  meant  business,  and  they  were 
rather  flattered  by  the  half  confidence  that  it 
placed  in  them.  They  appointed  a  committee 
to  go  to  Wentworth  and  Tenterdon.  Eventually, 
the  committee  went  as  far  as  New  Haven  to 
see  some  plans,  and  it  all  ended  in  our  build- 
ing this  place  which  we  are  going  to  to-day. 
We  got  a  plan  from  the  Methodists  ;  they  pub- 
lish some  very  good  plans  and  some  very  cheap 
plans,  and  we  never  had  to  pay  an  architect 
a  cent,  because  they  furnished  us,  very  good- 
naturedly,  the  plan  which  we  have  adopted. 
The  building  was  made  from  our  lumber  here, 
and  it  cost  a  little  inside  of  three  thousand 
dollars.  It  stands  on  our  books  as  having  cost 
twenty-nine  hundred  dollars.  In  this  case  we 
pay  the  idiot's  dividend,  exactly  as  we  pay  it 
on  the  other  capital  stock  of  the  concern.  In 
fact,  it  is  an  enlargement  of  the  capital  stock 
by  twenty-nine  hundred  dollars,  and  Mr.  Nourse 
owns  the  whole  of  this,  whereas  he  only  owns 


THE    CHURCH.  l6l 

ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  rest  of  the  stock. 
You  see,  then,  that  whoever  occupies  this 
church  has  to  pay  one  hundred  and  sixteen 
dollars  a  year  for  rent  to  him.  They  also  have 
to  pay  something  —  not  much  —  for  its  insur- 
ance. One  hundred  and  sixteen  dollars  a  year 
is  rather  more  than  two  dollars  a  week  \  and 
the  committee  who  had  it  in  charge  deter- 
mined very  soon  that  the  rent  of  the  church 
and  of  the  vestry,  for  any  and  every  pur- 
pose for  which  it  was  used,  should  be  one 
dollar  a  day.  They  thought,  and  it  has  proved 
that  they  thought  rightly,  that  they  should  be 
almost  certain  of  renting  the  church  fifty-two 
times  in  the  year  for  Sunday  services.  Thus 
they  would  have  fifty-two  dollars.  Then  they 
thought,  and  as  it  proved  they  thought  rightly, 
that  there  would  be  so  many  occasions  when 
the  vestry  was  wanted  for  a  public  hall,  as  you 
saw  it  was  wanted  the  other  night  when  they 
had  the  entertainment  there,  that  they  should 
get  from  that  sixty  or  seventy  dollars  more.  In 
point  of  fact,  they  have  always  had  enough  to 
keep  the  building  in  repair,  keep  it  warm,  and 
to  pay  for  their  lights  in  the  evening.  The 
occupation  evenings  costs  a  little  more  than  the 
occupation  on  Sunday,  because  the  lights  have 
to  be  provided  for ;  but  we  have  water  power 
running  to  waste  here,  so  that  since  we  got  in 


l62  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

our  electric  plant,  the  light  really  costs  them 
very  little,  and  indeed,  blessings  to  kerosene, 
it  never  cost  them  a  great  deal." 

Accordingly,  when  Sunday  afternoon  came, 
the  family  mustered  in  great  force  for  the  ser- 
vice. Mr.  Sherlock  arrived  late  —  but  came. 
I  had  gone  with  the  children  and  my  host  him- 
self to  a  Sunday-school  in  the  morning,  which 
was  largely  attended  by  grown  people  as  well  as 
children,  and  required  the  use  of  many  parts  of 
the  church  itself,  as  well  as  of  the  large  and 
small  rooms  in  the  vestry.  Spinner  explained 
to  me  as  we  went,  that  for  a  service  with  a  ser- 
mon all  the  committees  found  it  more  conven- 
ient, as  they  had  no  settled  minister,  to  take 
the  afternoon,  or,  as  on  this  occasion,  the  after- 
noon and  the  evening.  For,  with  this  arrange- 
ment, they  could  often  secure  the  presence  and 
service  of  clergymen  whom  they  liked  to  hear, 
from  the  large  towns  in  the  neighborhood,  who 
could  not  arrange  to  be  absent  from  their  own 
pulpits  in  the  morning.  This  Mr.  Sherlock,  who 
was  to  preach,  was  a  general  favorite.  He  would 
not  have  come  to  them  at  all,  however,  had  he 
been  needed  in  the  morning,  for  he  was  then 
engaged  in  the  service  of  his  own  church. 

Spinner's  son  George,  and  his  daughter  Pru- 
dence had  both  been  trained,  as  it  proved,  to 
write  in  shorthand,  and  they  told  me  that  they 


THE    CHURCH.  1 63 

had  notes  of  most  of  the  sermons  which  had 
been  preached  in  the  church  now  for  two  or 
three  years.  When  I  found  that  Mr.  Sherlock 
spoke  without  a  manuscript,  I  was  glad  that  the 
young  people  were  preserving  his  sermon.  For 
thus  I  was  able  to  bring  away  what  is  a  good 
report  of  it,  which  I  made  them  write  out  for 
me.  I  copy  it  here,  because  he  had  caught,  very 
thoroughly,  the  notion  which  was  at  the  bottom 
of  the  various  plans  at  Hampton,  and  the  ser- 
mon states  some  principles  of  that  notion,  as 
I  may  not  succeed  in  stating  them  elsewhere. 

The  text  was :  "  Bear  ye  one  another's  bur- 
dens, and  so  fulfil  the  law  of  Christ." 

I  think  you  must  have  noticed,  when  I  read 
the  New  Testament  lesson,  that  in  the  same  ap- 
peal Paul  bids  every  man  bear  his  own  burden. 
It  is  almost  in  one  breath  that  he  says  that 
every  man  must  bear  his  own  burden  and  that 
every  man  must  bear  his  brother's  burden. 
Now  it  will  not  do  for  a  moment  to  suppose 
that  this  is  a  matter  of  thoughtless  rhetoric,  — 
or  that  these  two  injunctions  may  be  separated 
out  from  each  other,  and  taken  each  for  itself 
alone.  You  will  not  find  any  thoughtless  rhet- 
oric in  this  man's  injunctions,  —  no,  not  when 
he  is  in  the  highest  heaven.  This  man  Paul  is 
a  master  of  life.     He  understood  the  ffreat  sci- 


164  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

encc  of  living  through  and  through.  Because 
he  understands  it,  —  because  he  knows  what  he 
is  talking  about,  —  though  he  has  only  a  few 
years  for  his  work,  —  though  he  goes  from  place 
to  place,  now  as  a  prisoner,  now  as  a  travelling 
tent-maker,  —  he  changes  all  Europe  from  what 
it  was  to  what  it  is.  He  makes  the  Western 
World  over,  because  he  has  the  practical  power 
to  inspire  it  with  the  Divine  Life.  Such  a  man 
does  not  talk  by  accident,  or  for  immediate  ef- 
fect. He  has  a  principle  beneath  every  word  he 
uses.  And  you  and  I  must  not  take  one  of  his 
practical  injunctions  without  allying  it  with  the 
others,  and  studying  them  together. 

You  will  find,  then,  all  through,  that  this  great 
leader  of  men  speaks  as  a  workman  speaks  to 
other  workmen.  He  tells  us  always,  —  what  in 
one  central  text  he  says  in  one  epigram,  — 
that  we  are  fellow-workmen  together  with  God. 
As  the  Saviour  had  said,  "My  Father  worketh 
hitherto,  and  I  work,"  Paul  takes  it  for  granted 
that  all  who  make  any  claim  to  take  the  Saviour's 
name  mean  to  work  in  the  world  into  which  they 
were  born.  They  are  not  to  dream  out  their 
salvation,  —  nor  to  talk  their  salvation  into  each 
other,  —  nor  to  argue  it  out,  — nor  to  buy  it  with 
a  great  price,  —  they  are  to  work  it  out.  He 
speaks  as  a  workman  to  workmen.  And  he 
takes  care  all  along  that  they  shall  know  that 


THE    CHURCH,  165 

he  is  a  workman,  and  that  he  is  not  ashamed  of 
his  work.  "  Mine  own  hands  ministered  to  my 
necessities,"  he  says,  and  never  fails  to  remind 
them  that,  by  example  of  daily  industry,  he  has 
illustrated  what  he  means,  when  he  says  so 
quaintly,  and  even  sharply,  that  every  man  must 
mind  his  own  business. 

Speaking  in  this  way,  as  a  man  who  knows 
what  work  is,  who  has  been  bred  to  a  good 
trade  at  which  he  can  earn  a  living,  Paul,  the 
most  practical  of  leaders  of  men,  is  engaged  in 
this  chapter  in  telling  these  people  the  wonders 
of  the  great  word  "Together."  How  this  little 
handful  of  men  is  to  rule  and  govern  the  world, 
because  no  man  is  alone,  but  We  act,  —  made 
perfect  in  union,  or,  as  the  Saviour  said,  made 
perfect  in  one.  Of  this  instruction,  the  text  is 
the  central  statement,  as  you  saw  when  I  read 
the  passage.  But  he  is  wholly  determined  that 
each  man  shall  know  his  personal  responsibility. 
No  man  is  to  undertake  that  vague,  smoky,  gen- 
eral, noisy  philanthropy,  which  disgraces  the  word 
philanthropy,  —  in  which  a  religious  tramp  an- 
nounces that  he  will  save  the  world,  when  he 
cannot  say  what  is  his  own  special  place  and 
part  in  the  world's  salvation.  Paul  will  not  let 
any  man  think  he  can  sing  well  enough  to  sing 
in  the  chorus,  unless  he  can  sing  well  enough 
when  it  is  his  place  to  sing  a  solo.     And  no  man 


l66  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

is  to  come  to  him  and  say,  "Paul,  I  should  like  a 
commission  to  go  out  to  the  world  and  reform 
the  world,  and  quicken  it  with  a  new  life,"  unless 
that  man  can  show  Paul  that  he  has  a  work  of 
his  own  that  he  can  do,  —  has  a  place  of  his  own 
that  he  fills  well,  —  or,  as  he  puts  it  in  better 
words,  unless  this  man  shows  that  he  can  bear 
his  own  burden. 

No  sceptic  or  scoffer  made  any  point  by  turn- 
ing on  Paul  after  one  of  his  addresses,  to  say, 
"Who  are  you  to  be  lecturing  us  about  industry, 
or  sobriety,  or  patience  in  work .''  You  are  hear- 
ing your  own  voice,  and  you  like  to  hear  it.  Try 
hard  work,  and  see  how  you  like  that."  No  man 
said  that  to  Paul,  for  they  knew  what  the  answer 
would  be.  "Who  am  I.'*  I  am  a  tent-maker. 
Come  down  to  Narrow  Street,  and  see  if  there 
is  better  tent-cloth  in  Corinth  than  I  have  there, 
—  or  if  there  is  a  better  shelter-tent  than  I  made 
yesterday."  He  knew  how  to  bear  his  own  bur- 
den, and  so  he  knew  how  to  bear  the  burdens  of 
the  world. 


I  will  take  another  occasion,  if  your  com- 
mittee are  so  good  as  to  ask  me  to  Hampton 
again,  to  show  by  separate  passages  from  Paul's 
letters  how  distinct  is  the  instruction  he  gives 
to  any  young  workingman  who  wants  to  suc- 
ceed, and  means  to  succeed,  as  to  the  method 


THE    CHURCH.  16/ 

of  his  daily  life.  He  does  not  simply  say  that 
every  man  shall  bear  his  own  burden,  but,  in 
one  practical  instruction  and  another,  he  shows 
him  how.  But  not  to-day.  Our  business  to-day 
is  with  the  other  text.  How  a  man  shall  do  his 
part  as  a  member  of  the  common  family  —  what 
people  now  call  the  community.  How  shall  a 
man  show  his  public  spirit  —  do  his  share  in  the 
public  or  common  life  .■'  How  and  where  shall  a 
Christian  man  appear  as  a  good  citizen  of  the 
state  or  as  a  good  member  of  the  church  .■• 

First,  and  very  briefly,  because  this  is  to  be 
the  whole  subject  of  that  other  sermon, — let 
him  know  how  to  do  his  own  work  well.  Let 
him  be  no  pretender.  How  shall  he  offer  him- 
self for  the  world's  service,  if  his  own  house  is 
not  in  order .-'  I  am  greatly  interested  in  the 
men  and  women  who  help  Paul.  There  is  a 
man  of  whom  we  know  nothing  but  that  he  was 
once  Paul's  amanuensis,  and  that  Paul  was  fond 
of  him.  "  I,  Tertius,  who  wrote  this  epistle," 
he  says,  with  a  certain  pride.  There  was  a  man 
who  knew  how  to  write.  He  knew  how  to  spell 
well.  Paul  was  troubled  with  his  weak  eyes, 
they  say,  and  was  glad  when  Tertius  volun- 
teered. But  he  would  not  have  been  glad  had 
Tertius  been  a  pretender, — if  he  wrote  a  care- 
less hand,  or  if  his  Greek  grammar  was  bad,  or 
if  he  spelled  badly.     In  truth,  Tertius  knew  how 


I()8  HOW    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

to  write  as  well  as  Paul  knew  how  to  make 
tents.  He  wrote  well,  —  well  enough  to  make 
the  first  draft  of  the  letter  to  the  Romans. 
And  his  name  is  presented  to  every  man  who 
has  his  Bible,  —  as  the  name  of  a  faithful  fellow, 
who  has  served  mankind,  —  for  century  after 
century,  through  all  time,  because  he  knew 
how  to  do  one  thing  well,  and  because  he  was 
willing  to  consecrate  that  talent  to  the  common 
weal. 

Now  keep  that  example  in  mind  all  along. 
Then  you  can  carry  into  the  notion  of  common 
work,  —  the  work  of  the  Common  Weal ;  or,  as 
Paul  would  say,  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  —  this 
first  necessity  that  it  is  clean  work,  work  well 
done.  It  is  not  slop-work.  It  is  good  journey- 
work,  as  our  fathers  used  to  say.  Take  for  a 
second  thought  the  eternal  truth  which  Paul 
falls  back  to  so  eagerly,  —  that,  if  one  member 
be  alive  and  strong,  the  whole  body  will  have 
a  better  chance  to  be  alive  and  strong.  Once 
and  again  he  falls  back  upon  that  fable  which 
the  Roman  senator  addressed  to  the  Roman 
people,  —  the  body  cannot  be  well  unless  each 
hand  and  eye  and  foot  is  well.  Life  in  the 
parts,  —  quick,  tingling  life,  —  so  that  there 
may  be  life  in  the  whole,  —  vigorous,  strong, 
eternal. 

How  many  men  I  have  known,  —  how  many 


THE    CHURCH.  1 69 

men  you  have  known,  —  who  had  even  gained 
for  themselves  a  sort  of  pubhc  reputation  for 
this  care  of  the  business  of  tlie  community,  who 
have  so  utterly  neglected  Paul's  personal  direc- 
tions that  they  cannot  take  any  care  of  their 
own.  Such  a  man,  by  some  political  turn,  is 
appointed  a  consul  abroad,  or  a  secretary  of 
legation.  He  studies  international  affairs,  he 
devotes  himself  to  the  public  business  in  these 
lines.  By  and  by,  there  is  a  political  overturn 
at  home,  and  the  government  will  not  renew 
his  commission.  He  has  to  come  home.  He 
is  apt  to  complain  that  he  is  left  out  in  the 
cold.  Then  you  begin  to  ask  what  he  is  fit  for ; 
"  What  did  he  do  when  he  was  at  home .'' " 
That  was  the  question  which  the  Connecticut 
farmer  asked  the  French  marshal,  Rochambeau. 
And  you  find  that  at  home  he  did  nothing  but 
manage  primary  meetings  and  attend  county 
conventions,  and,  in  other  fashions,  take  care  of 
elections.  He  had  no  trade  or  calling  in  which 
he  was  a  master.  I  suppose  this  to  be  what 
Paul  would  have  called  failing  to  bear  his  own 
burden.  What  follows  ?  Why,  when  the  coun- 
try, wisely  or  unwisely,  turns  him  out  from  its 
service,  there  is,  alas !  no  place  left  where  he  is 
to  fall. 

But  I  do  not  mean  to  speak  slightly  of  what 
this  man  has  done  in  attending  primary  meet- 


170  HOW    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

ings,  in  going  to  county  conventions,  and  in 
preparing  for  elections.  I  hope  no  man  hears 
me  who  does  not  go  to  primary  meetings  and 
who  is  not  willing  to  take  his  share  of  duty  in 
county  conventions,  and  who  does  not  diligently 
and  with  prayer  prepare  for  every  election  of 
the  town  or  of  the  state.  I  do  say,  that  no  man 
can  rightly  attend,  even  to  such  little  public 
duties  as  that,  and  that  no  man  can  have  the 
power  in  such  service  that  a  man  should  seek, 
who  has  not  shown  that  he  can  wisely  and  well 
mind  his  own  business,  keep  his  own  accounts, 
pay  his  own  debts,  stay  out  of  debt,  and  earn 
an  honorable  reputation  as  a  manly  workman. 

Such  a  man  as  that  has  flung  away  his  life  in 
trying  to  care  for  the  state,  while  he  cannot 
show  that  there  is  one  part  of  its  separate  duties 
that  he  can  do  well.  He  cannot  bear  his  own 
burdens,  because  he  has  all  his  life  thought  he 
was  bearing  other  people's.  Alas !  the  other 
people  do  not  agree  with  him !  They  think  he 
never  bore  theirs.  And  this  I  say  only  by 
illustration.  I  have  to  speak  of  what  affects  us 
here  more  directly.  I  have  to  speak  of  the 
welfare  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  as  an  organ- 
ized institution.  And  I  am  not  speaking  of  this 
particular  church  of  yours,  or,  may  I  say,  yours 
and  ours }  For  I  do  not  know  you  personally 
as  well  as  I  wish  I  did,  and  so  I  have  no  knowl- 


THE    CHURCH.  I/I 

edge  from  which  I  can  speak  personally  of  your 
affairs.  But,  in  many  churches,  —  and  a  pity 
it  is  to  have  to  say  so,  —  there  are  brethren, 
yes,  and  there  are  sisters,  who  are  prominent  in 
the  business  of  the  Church  as  a  church,  who 
cannot  take  care  of  their  own  business.  It 
seems  as  if  they  took  the  time  for  the  affairs  of 
the  organization  which  they  would  have  better 
spent  on  their  own  affairs.  Or,  looking  the  other 
way,  it  seems  as  if,  because  they  found  nothing 
to  do  in  their  own  business,  they  thought  they 
would  undertake  the  Master's  business  rather 
than  do  nothing.  Now  he  wants  no  such  re- 
cruits. He  wants  whole  men  and  whole  women. 
He  wants  those  who  can  do  a  good  day's  work, 
and  do  it  well.  He  wants  those  who  have  been 
faithful  in  few  things,  —  and  it  is  those,  and 
those  only  whom  he  promotes  to  the  charge 
of  many  things.  It  is  the  faithful,  industrious, 
yes,  and  successful  saint,  who  has  used  the 
talent  which  was  given  him,  who  has  rightly 
and  well  handled  the  pound  intrusted  to  him, 
to  whom  there  comes,  to  surprise  his  modesty, 
that  noblest  welcome  ever  spoken,  "  Enter  thou 
into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord."  And  no  man  can 
pretend  to  tell  what  is  the  injury  which  has 
been  inflicted  on  the  Church  by  the  profane 
interference  in  the  work  it  has  to  do,  of  those 
whom  men  saw  incapable  of   doing   their  own 


172  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IX    HAMPTON. 

work.  Their  words  are  vain  ;  their  appeals  are 
vain  ;  their  counsels  are  vain  ;  —  because  men 
judge  them  by  their  fruits.  They  have  not 
borne  their  own  burdens  well,  and  so  it  is  that, 
in  this  most  important  affair  of  all,  it  is  certain 
that  they  cannot  bear  their  brothers'. 

Now,  by  the  side  of  that  failure,  —  of  the  man 
whom  I  described  just  now,  the  man  who  put 
his  trust  in  princes,  and  found  princes  failed  him, 
—  I  will  tell  you  the  story  of  another  failure. 
It  is  the  man  who  stitches  and  hammers  at 
shoes  on  his  bench,  —  ten,  twelve  hours  a  day, 
perhaps,  —  or  who  stands  behind  his  counter 
from  early  morning  to  late  evening,  or  who 
drudges  in  the  same  self-imposed  slavery  at  the 
forge  or  the  grindstone,  and  does  nothing  else, 
does  nothing  larger.  He  does  not  bear  his 
brother's  burdens.  He  does  not  care  for  the  com- 
mon weal.  He  will  let  his  children  go  to  the  pub- 
lic school.  But  he  will  not  serve  on  the  district 
committee.  He  will  let  his  wife  take  a  book 
from  the  public  library.  But  he  will  not  be  a 
trustee  or  a  director.  He  is  willing  to  walk  on 
the  sidewalk  and  drive  on  the  road.  But  he  will 
not  be  a  county  commissioner,  or  a  selectman, 
or  a  roadmaster.  He  is  willing  to  have  the  gov- 
ernment bring  him  his  letters  and  his  newspa- 
pers, and  to  pay  for  that  service  not  half  what  it 
costs.     But  he  is  not  willing  to  go  to  an  election. 


THE    CHURCH.  I73 

or  to  compel  the  right  choice  so  far  as  his  power 
goes.  "He  does  not  care  for  poHtics."  ^sop 
would  have  been  glad  to  jDut  such  a  man  in  a 
fable.  But  even  ^sop  could  not  find  a  fox  or  a 
hedgehog  who  was  so  mean.  This  is  the  man  who 
tells  you,  "I  care  for  nobody, — no,  not  I  !"  — 
and  he  deserves  to  have  the  other  half  of  the  song 
come  true,  which  says  that  "nobody  cares  for  me." 

Mr.  Sherlock  made  a  long  pause  after  this 
description  of  selfishness,  and  then,  addressing 
himself  personally  to  the  men  in  front  of  him, 
he  said  :  — 

I  say  all  this  here,  because  I  think  you  work- 
men at  Hampton  have  even  more  distinct  du- 
ties in  these  lines  than  the  general  run  of  work- 
men in  America.  I  declare  to  you,  that  I  think 
this  system  of  manufacture  which  you  have 
started  here,  is  going  to  stand  or  fall,  to  succeed 
or  to  fail,  —  according  to  the  answers  which  the 
men  in  this  church  now, — the  hundred  and  fifty 
of  you  who  are  workers  and  voters  and  thinkers, 
—  make  to  these  two  demands  of  Paul.  You 
have  started  a  system  in  which  the  workman  is 
the  capitalist  in  part,  and  in  which  the  workman 
shares  as  he  ought  to  share  in  the  ups  and 
downs  of  every  honorable  adventure.  There  is 
no  act  of  Congress  or  of  Parliament  that  any 


174  'low    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

man  should  grow  rich.  There  is  a  promise  of 
the  Eternal  God  that  the  community  which  lives 
by  His  law,  and  seeks  Him,  shall  find  Him. 
More  than  this,  —  He  has  said  that  the  commu- 
nity which  seeks  Him  and  finds  His  Kingdom, 
shall  have  these  little  things,  such  as  meat  and 
drink  and  clothing  ;  they  shall  be  added,  He  has 
said,  to  His  other  infinite  compensations.  But 
this  community  must  live  by  His  law.  It  must 
obey  Him.  It  must  be  part  of  His  Kingdom. 
He  must  be  King.  No  man  in  it  shall  live  for 
himself.  They  must  live  for  the  common  good. 
Every  man  in  it  must  bear  his  own  burden. 
But  every  man  also  must  bear  his  brother's.  I 
say,  that  on  your  success  here  will  it  depend 
whether  other  mill-owners  will  try  the  same  ven- 
ture, whether  other  workmen  will  have  the  same 
opportunity.  I  say  you  will  succeed  if  the  very 
men  who  hear  me  are  willing  to  count  them- 
selves, not  as  lonely  men,  but  as  brothers  in  the 
great  brotherhood,  —  as  fellow-soldiers  in  Christ's 
army.  I  do  not  know  if  you  thought  of  this 
when  you  began.  I  think  perhaps  you  builded 
better  than  you  knew.  But  this  I  know,  —  and 
you  will  learn,  —  that  your  enterprise  will  suc- 
ceed as  fast  and  as  far  as  every  workman  in  it 
works  as  a  fellow-workman  with  God,  and  so  is 
willing  and  ready  to  do  his  share  of  the  building 
of  God's  Kingcdom  in  the  world. 


CHAPTER   X. 


THE    PUBLIC    LIBRARY. 


I  HAD  seen  in  the  co-operative  store  tliat 
they  had  made  all  the  arrangements  for  a 
reading-room,  and  that  they  had  a  very  small 
collection  of  books  of  reference  which  they  used 
there.  They  said  that  they  had  had  a  more 
extensive  collection  of  books,  but  that  when  the 
library  was  founded  their  books  went  in  with 
the  others  into  that  collection.  This  led  me  to 
inquire  about  the  library  the  next  morning  from 
my  friend,  and  he  sent  one  of  his  children  with 
me  that  afternoon  to  see  it,  and  to  talk  with 
the  librarian.  The  library  was  in  a  separate 
house,  which  they  told  me  had  been  a  dye-house 
in  the  old  mill ;  but  which  had  been  taken  jdos- 
session  of  for  this  purpose,  when  the  new 
dye-house  was  built  under  the  direction  of  the 
present  company.  I  found  that  the  pecuniary 
arrangement  of  the  library  was  precisely  the 
same  as  that  made  for  the  church.  This  old 
dye-house  had  been  valued.  The  house  was 
worth,   at  the  time  they  took  possession  of  it, 


1/6  now    TllEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON, 

$475,  and  they  paid  a  rent  of  four  per  cent  to  the 
proprietors  of  the  mill  for  the  use  of  it.  Indeed, 
I  found  on  talking  to  one  or  two  of  the  men  and 
several  of  the  women,  that  they  all  understood 
that  it  was  better  on  every  account  that  they 
should  maintain  the  library,  themselves,  and  that 
it  should  not  be  counted  as  an  eleemosynary  in- 
stitution or  an  institution  which  other  people 
founded  for  them.  I  had  no  doubt,  from  my  ex- 
perience with  some  other  institutions  elsewhere, 
that  it  was  much  more  than  worth  the  trifle  which 
they  paid  for  rent,  to  be  able  to  diffuse  the  feel- 
ing among  all  the  young  people,  and  what  I  may 
call  the  outsiders,  that  they  bought  these  books 
themselves  for  themselves,  and  that  nobody  was 
trying  to  stuff  down  their  throats  a  particular 
literature  selected  by  some  higher  power.  In- 
deed, the  first  step  in  the  institution  of  the 
library,  large  or  small,  is  apt  to  be  a  false  one, 
and  its  falseness  is  in  this  direction  —  of  con- 
descension. The  founder  of  the  library  has 
given  ten  thousand  dollars,  and  he  thinks,  and 
probably  thinks  correctly,  that  he  knows  better 
than  the  people  who  are  to  read  it  what  they 
had  better  read.  He  is  right  in  thinking  that 
he  knows  better  than  they  do.  But  he  is  wrong 
in  thinking  that  he  can  make  them  read  books 
which  they  do  not  want  to  read. 

Now,  exactly  as  in  the  co-operative  store,  the 


THE    PUBLIC    LIBRARY.  I77 

store  began  to  succeed  when  they  gave  the  pur- 
chasers an  equal  share  in  the  profit,  so  in  the 
library,  the  library  begins  to  succeed  when  the 
readers  begin  to  understand  that  it  is,  in  good 
faith,  their  library,  and  not  the  library  that  some- 
body else  has  made  for  them.  You  may  use  any 
amount  of  moral  suasion  you  choose  in  persuad- 
ing them  to  read  good  books  instead  of  bad 
books.  In  the  long  run  they  will  find  that  a 
good  book  is  better  than  a  bad  one,  as  indeed 
its  name  would  seem  to  imply.  But  you  are 
not  going  to  make  them  read  books  because 
certain  other  people  of  an  education  different 
from  their  own  had  read  them  and  say  they 
ought  to  be  read. 

The  most  striking  instance  I  ever  knew  of  the 
infelicity  of  letting  one  set  of  people  buy  books 
for  another,  is  in  the  story  told  of  a  state  gov- 
ernment, in  old  times,  which  used  to  send  to 
the  same  publisher  annually,  for  so  many  thou- 
sand dollars'  worth  of  books  for  the  state  library. 
Poor  human  nature  is  so  weak  that  they  say  he 
could  not  resist  the  temptation  of  clearing  off, 
every  year,  so  much  of  his  stock  which  the  rest 
of  the  purchasing  world  had  not  chosen  to  buy. 
Now  those  books  which  he  sent  were  undoubt- 
edly good  books,  well  printed,  and  well  bound. 
But,  after  all,  the  use  of  a  book  is  to  be  read. 
Indeed,  the  sooner  it  is  read  to  pieces,  the  bet- 


1/8  HOW    TllEV    LIVED    IX    HAMPTON. 

ter.  For  you  can  certainly  get  another  copy, 
and  you  know  then  that  it  has  fulfilled  its  mis- 
sion. The  danger  and  the  vice  of  librarians  is, 
that  they  are  apt  to  think  that  it  is  important 
that  their  books  should  be  kept  on  the  shelves. 
Now,  on  the  other  hand,  they  should  regard 
themselves  as  doing  a  duty  exactly  like  that  of 
the  directors  or  cashiers  of  banks,  whose  busi- 
ness it  is  to  keep  the  money  of  the  stockholders 
in  active  circulation,  to  know  where  it  is,  and  to 
be  able  to  recall  it  at  the  proper  times,  and  by 
no  means  to  lock  up  all  their  capital  stock  in 
their  vaults,  of  no  use  to  any  one. 

The  public  library  at  Hampton  was  not 
above  receiving  gifts,  however,  after  it  was 
organized.  In  point  of  fact,  Mr.  Nourse  made 
it  some  very  handsome  gifts.  As  Mr.  Spinner 
had  told  me,  he  was  a  great  traveller,  and  he  had 
formed  a  habit,  when  he  was  in  any  distant  city, 
of  sending  to  them  such  books  as  would  illus- 
trate the  history  or  customs  of  the  country  in 
which  he  was,  if  he  could  find  them  in  English. 
And  he  passed  his  rule  sometimes  when  he  could 
send  good  illustrated  books,  though  they  were  in 
other  languages.  Still,  as  Miss  Jane  Stevens 
had  said  of  her  little  library,  —  the  principal  sup- 
port of  the  library  was  from  the  people  them- 
selves. The  committee  which  directed  it  was  a 
sub-committee  of  the  government  of  the  store, 


THE    PUBLIC    LIBRARY.  1/9 

and  with  every  return  at  the  annual  meeting  of 
the  stockholders,  and  other  persons  interested 
in  the  stock,  they  voted  a  larger  and  larger  sum 
towards  library  expenses.  They  engaged  a  young 
woman  to  keep  the  library  open  every  evening 
at  first,  and  eventually  it  was  kept  open  all  the 
time  in  winter  when  the  mills  were  not  running. 
This  made  a  very  long  evening. 

I  have  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  such  things 
in  different  places,  and  I  looked  with  a  good  deal 
of  interest  through  the  shelves,  and  afterwards 
over  the  printed  catalogue,  to  see  what  class  of 
books  they  had  chosen  to  buy.  I  was  not  sur- 
prised to  find  a  very  large  proportion  of  children's 
books.  Then  there  was  a  quite  considerable 
branch  of  books  of  natural  history,  and  I  found, 
on  inquiring,  that  the  interest  in  these  studies  was 
due  to  Miss  Jane  Stevens  herself.  She  had  a  boy 
come  in  one  night  to  her  schoolroom,  who  wanted 
a  book,  and  she  had  the  good  sense  to  show  one 
of  Mr.  Nourse's  elegant  books  of  illustration, 
which  was,  as  it  happened,  a  series  of  butterflies 
and  other  insects  which  had  been  collected  in 
South  America.  She  told  the  boy  that  he  and 
his  companion  might  look  at  the  book  there,  if 
they  would  be  careful.  But  then  she  asked  if 
they  would  not  like  to  know  something  about 
butterflies,  and  perhaps  to  collect  butterflies, 
and  put  into  their  hands  a  little  English  book 


l80  now    THKY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

not  above  them,  which  had  some  curious  studies 
on  the  habits  of  caterpillars,  moths,  and  butter- 
flies. The  next  Saturday  afternoon  they  started 
out,  four  or  five  of  them,  with  a  butterfly  net, 
and  the  result  was  quite  a  little  collection.  She 
taught  some  of  the  girls  how  to  make  cages  in 
which  caterpillars  could  spin  their  cocoons.  She 
taught  some  of  them  how  to  make  for  them- 
selves little  books  in  which,  as  well  as  they 
could,  they  drew  pictures  of  the  growth  of  the 
grub  from  the  egg,  representing  him  every  three 
days,  in  fact,  till  he  advanced  to  his  full  size. 
Boys  and  girls  took  up  the  new  study  with  a 
great  deal  of  enthusiasm,  and  the  result  was 
that  there  was  a  great  demand  for  all  the  "  but- 
terfly books,"  as  they  called  them,  which  Miss 
Stevens  had  in  store ;  and  the  committee,  of 
course,  were  glad,  as  far  as  their  means  went, 
to  let  her  buy  more.  As  soon  as  Mr.  Nourse 
heard  this,  he  was  well  pleased.  One  of  the 
girls  had  made  a  particularly  pretty  book  of 
studies,  and  had  gone  so  far  as  to  color  her 
caterpillars  neatly.  This  was  sent  to  Mr. 
Nourse  as  a  Christmas  present.  He  was  very 
much  pleased,  and,  from  that  time,  kept  his  eye 
on  the  catalogues  and  advertisements,  and  sup- 
plied the  little  collection  with  popular  books  ; 
and,  indeed,  with  some  books  of  a  scientific  value 
which  would  help  the  children  in  these  lines. 


THE    PUBLIC    LIBRARY.  l8l 

Miss  Stevens  told  me  of  this  story  with  a  good 
deal  of  interest,  as,  indeed,  she  might ;  and  from 
his  own  point  of  view.  Spinner  afterwards  told 
me  the  same  story,  to  show  that  a  study  which 
could  never  have  been  forced  upon  the  com- 
munity as  this,  introduced  itself,  as  he  said,  if 
you  were  only  willing  to  begin  at  the  right  end. 

I  found  that  she  was  in  correspondence  with 
the  Hartford  people,  the  Providence  people,  with 
Mr.  Bowker  in  New  York,  and  that  she  kept  the 
run  of  what  she  wanted,  in  the  way  of  publica- 
tion and  library  work,  as  well  as  the  grandest  of 
them  do.  In  short,  she  assured  me,  and  so  did 
Mr.  Spinner,  that  the  library  was  now  a  very  pop- 
ular institution  in  the  place,  and  that  there  was 
no  danger  whatever  that  the  interest  in  it  would 
fall  away.  They  lent  very  freely,  but  they  en- 
forced their  rules  regularly ;  and  they  were  glad 
to  extend  their  accommodations  for  reading  in 
the  building  itself,  so  as  to  encourage  all  the 
young  people  to  form  habits  of  reading  where, 
of  course,  they  could  readily  consult  books  of 
reference. 

Mr.  Raikes,  superintendent  of  the  Sunday- 
school,  told  me  that  the  Sunday-school  was  a 
different  place  and  a  different  thing,  now  that 
he  and  the  other  teachers  could  refer  the  older 
scholars  to  such  books  as  they  ought  to  consult, 
and  that  he  was  quite  sure  that  when  an  intclli- 


l82  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

gent  teacher  made  such  a  suggestion,  the  sug- 
gestion would  be  followed  up  by  application  to 
Miss  Stevens,  or  the  librarian,  for  the  books 
referred  to.  She  told  me  that  she  made  it  a 
matter  of  course  to  have  on  hand  all  the  books 
required  for  reference  by  the  Chautauquan  Read- 
ing Circle,  and  that  they  had,  every  year,  a  large 
"  home  circle  "  of  those  readers,  who  would  have 
given  her  no  peace  if  she  had  not  kept  the 
library  up  to  the  intelligent  requisitions  which 
the  Chautauquan  system  of  reading  demands. 

All  this,  however,  it  must  be  observed,  was 
absolutely  democratic.  The  readers  themselves 
made  the  selection  of  books.  They  thought  they 
knew  what  they  wanted,  and  if  they  made  a  mis- 
take the  fault  was  their  own. 


CHAPTER   XI. 


ENTERTAINMENT. 


HAMPTON  made  up  the  whole,  or^nearly 
the  whole,  as  has  been  said,  of  District 
No.  13,  in  the  township  in  which  it  belonged, 
so  that  the  management  of  its  school  fell  almost 
entirely  under  the  oversight  of  a  district  com- 
mittee, chosen  by  the  people  themselves  in 
their  annual  town  meeting.  Such  is  the  law  of 
that  state.  A  year  or  two  before  I  was  there, 
some  showman  had  come  up  the  valley  with  an 
exhibition,  which  had  called  together,  as  most 
shows  or  concerts  did,  a  considerable  audience, 
and  which  had  displeased  the  leaders  of  the 
community.  I  should  not  think  they  had  been 
prudish  or  over-sensitive  about  it,  from  what  I 
heard.  But  Holmes,  for  instance,  said  to  me, 
very  quietly,  "  It  was  not  such  a  performance 
as  I  chose  to  take  my  wife  and  children  to  see." 
Now  a  good  deal  of  money  goes  into  the 
pockets  of  the  itinerant  showmen,  of  various 
departments,  in  a  village  as  prosperous  as  this. 
And  if  I  class  the  purveyors  of  concerts,  and 
the  gentlemen  and   ladies  who  deliver  lectures 


184  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    IIAMl'TON. 

among  the  showmen,  they  must  not  be  sur- 
prised. For  certainly  the  announcements,  or 
the  advertisements,  sometimes  make  it  hard  to 
distinguish  between  the  entertainments  pro- 
posed. 

When  there  was  any  talk,  serious  or  light,  as 
to  the  advantages  or  disadvantages  of  Hampton 
as  a  place  to  live  in,  it  was  very  apt  to  come 
round  to  the  discussion  of  the  amusements 
which  came  there,  or  which  stayed  away.  In- 
deed, the  great  problem  of  this  day,  and  of  the 
next  generation,  is  how  the  congestion  of  the 
large  cities  is  to  be  checked,  and  how  the  popu- 
lation of  the  country  can  be  increased.  Who- 
ever is  interested  in  this  question,  and  means 
to  do  anything  for  its  solution,  had  best  con- 
sider, first  of  all,  the  questions  of  public  amuse- 
ment or  entertainment.  For  there  is  no  use  in 
proving  to  young  people  that  they  can  earn 
more  wages  in  a  healthy  country  village  than 
in  a  crowded  unhealthy  city,  if  they  think  the 
city  cheerful  and  gay  or  the  country  dull  and 
stupid.  They  do  not  crowd  the  cities  because 
they  think  they  shall  grow  rich  there,  but 
because  they  want  an  animated  and  crowded 
life.  Wisely  or  unwisely,  they  are  tempted  by 
the  excitement  of  crowds,  of  concerts,  of  bands, 
of  theatres,  of  public  meetings,  of  processions,  of 
exhibitions,  of  parties,  of  clubs,  or,  in  general. 


ENTERTAINMENT.  1 85 

of  society.  Whoever  will  take  the  trouble  to 
listen  to  the  conversation  of  such  young  people, 
will  see,  in  five  minutes,  that  the  recollection  of 
such  excitements,  or  the  hope  of  partaking  of 
them,  is  the  inducement  which  leads  them  to  seek 
city  life,  or  which,  after  they  have  sought  it,  leads 
them  to  remain  in  it,  in  spite  of  its  manifold  hard- 
ships. Mrs.  Helen  Campbell  has  painted  a  terri- 
ble picture,  not  exaggerated,  not  overcolored  in 
a  single  stroke,  which  portrays  the  horrible 
sufferings  of  the  handiworkers  of  her  own  sex 
in  the  city  of  New  York,  But  whoever  asks 
why  those  poor  women  remain  there,  in  their 
ill-requited  toil,  and  why  they  do  not  go  to  live 
in  that  country  which  God  made,  with  its  better 
wages  and  its  lighter  work,  learns  at  once  that 
the  sufficient  reason  is  that  they  want  to  stay, 
and  do  not  want  to  go.  More  than  this,  if  any 
Aladdin  should  lift  fifty  thousand  of  the  poorest 
of  them  from  their  wretched  tenements  to- 
night, and  make  of  them  princesses  and  duch- 
esses, their  hard  places  in  their  workshops 
would  be  filled  before  the  week  was  over  by 
fifty  thousand  other  girls  who  would  gladly 
come  from  the  hillsides  and  valleys,  which  we 
rightly  say  are  better  homes  for  them. 

Whoever  considers  the  problem  thus  pre- 
sented, and  wants  to  relieve  what  we  have 
called  the  congestion  of  life  in  the  large  cities, 


l86  now    THKV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

must  do  what  he  can  to  increase  the  opportuni- 
ties for  entertainment,  for  amusement,  yes,  for 
excitement,  so  far  as  it  can  reasonably  be  done, 
for  those  who  live  in  the  country.  It  is  a  mis- 
fortune indeed,  that,  from  the  nature  of  the 
case,  literature  is  misleading.  Books  are  gener- 
ally printed  in  cities,  and  naturally  authors 
gather  there.  The  leading  newspapers  and 
magazines  are,  almost  of  necessity,  published 
in  such  cities.  So  far  as  they  direct  the  opinion 
of  the  young,  there  is  an  undercurrent  or  ground- 
note,  which  suggests  to  the  young  reader  that 
in  cities  is  to  be  found  the  governing  influence 
of  the  world.  The  suggestion  is  probably  false, 
but  it  is  none  the  less  seductive  to  inexperienced 
readers.  Thus  Mr.  Horace  Greeley  may  say, 
"  Go  West,  young  man,"  but  the  young  man  ob- 
serves that  Mr.  Greeley  himself  remains  in  New 
York,  and  naturally  enough,  if  he  respects  him, 
follows  his  example  rather  than  his  instructions. 
The  leading  people  in  the  village  of  Hampton 
knew  perfectly  well  how  strong  was  the  under- 
tow of  the  tide  which  would  carry  away  their 
young  people  to  larger  manufacturing  towns, 
or  to  great  commercial  cities,  if  its  constant 
sweep  was  not  steadily  counteracted.  It  was 
after  the  almost  disgraceful  public  entertain- 
ment which  has  been  alluded  to,  that  they  took 
distinct  measures,  quite  systematically,  to  super- 


ENTERTAINMENT.  1 8/ 

intend  the  public  entertainment  by  system ; 
and  the  people  most  interested  in  this  meant 
positive  work,  and  not  negative.  "We  want 
to  overcome  evil  with  good,"  said  Dick  Sheri- 
dan, a  queer  Irishman  they  had  among  them, 
who,  as  it  happened,  took  the  oversight  of  this 
business.  A  district  school  meeting  in  No.  9 
was  not  generally  an  affair  which  greatly  inter- 
ested the  younger  voters,  or  the  people  gener- 
ally. But  on  the  occasion  alluded  to,  it  had 
been  generally  reported  in  the  shops  and  the 
different  rooms,  that  Uncle  Dick,  as  Sheridan 
was  called,  meant  to  make  a  speech.  Such  a 
thing  was  quite  unheard  of,  and  the  meeting  was 
crowded  with  voters  and  with  spectators  also, 
who  had  come  to  hear  the  man  who,  though  he 
was  the  wit  or  wag  of  the  village,  was  not 
generally  interested  in  public  affairs. 

When  the  meeting  was  well  under  way,  Sher- 
idan rose,  perfectly  serious  ;  and  an  excellent 
speech  he  made.  He  knew  that  the  boys  had 
come  with  the  idea  that  he  would  make  fun  for 
them,  and  he  took  care  that  the  boys  should  be 
disappointed.  He  spoke,  with  a  good  deal  of 
feeling,  of  the  impression  which  the  coarse  and 
vulgar  entertainment  had  made  in  the  village. 
He  said  he  did  not  think  any  one  in  the  village 
was  to  blame  for  it,  but,  for  one,  he  did  not  mean 
to  have  the  young  people  so  insulted  again  if  he 


l88  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

could  help  it.  lie  said  also  that  any  one  who 
knew  him  knew  that  he  had  no  wish  to  check 
legitimate  fun  or  sport  of  any  kind.  He  had 
not  come  to  this  meeting  with  any  such  idea. 
It  was  here  that  he  used  the  quotation  from  St. 
Paul  that  has  been  cited,  and  said  that  if  they 
meant  to  abate  such  nuisances  they  must  over- 
come evil  with  good. 

"That  w^e  may  have,"  said  he,  "such  advan- 
tage as  legal  authority  may  give  us  in  this  mat- 
ter, I  propose  that  the  district  committee,  now 
to  be  elected,  be  requested  to  take  the  super- 
vision of  the  public  entertainments  of  this  place 
as  a  part  of  the  public  education.  I  know  very 
well  how  much  and  how  little  this  vote  may 
mean  under  the  law  of  this  state.  But  I  know, 
also,  that  it  will  mean  a  great  deal  in  this  com- 
munity if  it  is  passed,  as  I  believe  it  will  be, 
unanimously. 

"  My  idea  is,  that  instead  of  a  district  school- 
committee  of  three,  such  as  we  usually  choose, 
we  shall  this  year  make  a  committee  of  ten.  I 
propose  that  we  re-elect  the  last  year's  committee 
of  three,  and  add  to  it  three  gentlemen  and  four 
ladies.  I  propose  that,  besides  the  supervision 
of  our  school,  they  communicate  with  the  select- 
men of  this  town  as  to  the  persons  who  receive 
licenses  for  public  entertainment.  If  they  ap- 
prove, on  the  whole,  of  such  persons,  all  right. 


ENTERTAINMENT.  1 89 

If  they  find  another  such  case  as  that  of  these 
minstrels  we  had  here  last  month,  why,  they  will 
say  so  to  the  people  who  have  halls  to  let  here, 
and  I  do  not  think  that,  when"  they  have  said  so, 
anybody  in  this  town  will  let  such  a  man  a  hall." 
Here  there  was  some  applause.  But  Dick  Sheri- 
dan went  steadily  on.  "  But  I  do  not  mean  to 
stop  here."  He  meant  that  this  committee, — 
and  when  he  said  committee  he  really  meant 
himself,  —  should  take  boldly  and  bodily  the 
positive  direction  and  provision  for  the  amuse- 
ments of  the  place.  He  had  thought  of  this 
before  a  good  deal,  and  was  not  sorry  to  under- 
take to  carry  out  some  of  his  own  plans.  He 
was  quite  clear  that,  with  a  little  money  in  hand, 
so  that  fit  contracts  could  be  made  with  the 
right  persons,  he  could  induce  performers  or 
artists  of  high  character  to  come  to  Hampton 
for  the  entertainment  of  the  people.  He  did 
not  even  dare  to  show  his  own  committee  at 
first  his  plans  in  detail,  so  bold  were  they.  But 
he  was  one  of  those  men  who  has  his  eyes  open 
to  such  things ;  he  was  constitutionally  fond 
of  public  entertainment  himself,  and  had  never 
succeeded  very  well  in  enjoying  himself  when 
he  was  all  alone  for  four  or  five  hours  in  an 
evening,  even  if  you  gave  him  the  most  enter- 
taining books  for  company.  He  was  a  social 
fellow,  who  liked  to  be  in  a  crowd,  and  he  knew, 


IQO  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

almost  by  instinct,  those  people  who,  by  genius 
or  education,  were  able  to  call  such  persons  to- 
gether. He  said  there  were  good  actors  who 
would  give  recitals  and  presentations,  that  there 
were  good  artists  who  would  draw  amusing  or 
instructive  pictures  at  sight  for  audiences,  that 
there  were  musicians,  vocal  or  instrumental,  who 
were  only  waiting  to  be  employed,  and  that  the 
person  who  could  control  these  people  was 
a  permanent  and  official  manager  with  a  little 
money  in  his  hand.  He  said  that  this  class  of 
people  were,  of  their  very  nature,  singularly 
poor  business  men  ;  he  said  that  if  a  business 
man  met  with  them,  he  had  them,  so  to  speak, 
at  an  advantage.  Now  Sheridan  did  not  want  to 
cheat  them  ;  he  did  want  to  pay  them  fair  wages 
for  fair  work  ;  and  he  wanted  to  entertain  the  peo- 
ple of  Hampton  at  the  same  time.  All  this  he 
had  thought  out  himself.  All  this  he  knew  he 
could  persuade  his  committee  to  try,  or  he  thought 
he  knew  it.  And  he  made  this  speech  with  a  view 
to  having  that  sort  of  authority  given  to  him  that 
he  could  go  forward  with  courage,  and  that  nobody 
could  say  that  Dick  Sheridan  was  putting  himself 
into  an  affair  with  which  he  had  nothing  to  do. 
So  soon  as  Sheridan  had  spoken,  my  friend 
Holmes,  he  of  the  cabbage  and  strawberries, 
spoke,  and  to  the  same  purpose,  though  in  cjuite 
a  different  way.     I  fancy  that  they  had  not  had 


ENTERTAINMENT.  I9I 

much  to  do  with  each  other  before,  and  that  it 
was  rather  a  surprise,  perhaps  an  amusement  to 
the  youngsters  present,  to  see  them  advocating 
the  same  cause  at  the  same  meeting.  Holmes 
was  recognized  as  a  religious  man.  He  had  a 
Bible  class  on  Sunday,  and  was,  I  believe, 
thought  strict  in  the  charge  of  his  children. 
Nobody  ever  called  Dick  Sheridan  strict,  and, 
though  he  was  a  very  decent  member  of  the 
community,  as  far  as  his  daily  manners  and 
customs  went,  nobody  would  have  classed  him 
among  distinctly  religious  men.  If  he  was  dis- 
tinguished for  anything,  it  was  for  a  tradition 
that  he  had  once  been  a  pitcher  in  a  celebrated 
ball-club,  and  that  he  always  interested  himself 
in  the  sports  of  such  clubs  in  Hampton  and  in 
Wentworth. 

The  motion,  however,  was  no  surprise  to  the 
leader  of  the  meeting,  or  to  the  fathers  of  fam- 
ilies who  were  interested  in  the  schools.  It  had 
been  carefully  arranged  beforehand,  in  the  homa 
talk  which  makes  the  genuine  "  preliminary 
meeting"  in  New  England  politics,  and,  with 
little  other  discussion  than  has  been  described, 
it  was  passed  unanimously.  The  three  dis- 
trict committeemen  of  the  last  year  were 
chosen  again.  To  them  were  added  three  men 
and  four  women,  as  Sheridan  had  proposed. 
He  was  one  of  the  men,  Holmes  was  another, 


192  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

and  young  Brahm,  who  was  the  first  bass  on 
the  glee-ckib  and  president  of  the  ball-club,  was 
the  third  ;  Miss  Jane  Stevens,  who  has  been 
already  spoken  of,  was  one  of  the  women. 

So  soon  as  the  committee  was  organized,  it 
was  clear  that  Dick  Sheridan  "meant  work." 
He  was  in  correspondence  with  this  band  and 
that  quartette.  He  was  away  in  New  York  for 
two  or  three  days,  and  there  were  even  rumors 
that  he  had  a  personal  interview  with  Mr. 
Beecher,  to  persuade  him  to  come  to  Hamp- 
ton to  lecture.  What  he  did,  and  what  he  was 
said  to  do,  kept  the  talkers  of  Hampton  busy 
for  the  next  six  weeks,  and  the  newspapers  in 
Wentworth  and  Alton  even  took  up  the  story 
of  the  achievements  of  this  committee.  What 
followed  was,  as  he  himself  explained  to  me, 
that  never  was  there  a  course  of  entertainments 
so  well  advertised  as  this  first  course  of  con- 
certs, lectures,  and  readings.  "From  that  time, 
Mr.  Freeman,"  he  said  to  me,  "we  were  made. 
We  made  on  that  one  course,  —  oh,  more  than 
two  hundred  dollars  clear  profit, — just  because 
it  was  a  new  thing,  and  everybody  was  talking 
about  us.  There  is  plenty  of  money  spent  on 
these  things  always.  The  trouble  is,  that  very 
little  of  it,  in  comparison,  goes  to  modest  peo- 
ple, who  will  not  blow,  and  a  great  deal  of  it 


ENTERTAINMENT,  I93 

goes  to  liars  and  tramps,  who  skin  the  business, 
and  never  mean  to  come  again. 

"  We  had  over  two  hundred  dollars  in  hand. 
We  appointed  a  permanent  trustee  and  treas- 
urer to  keep  it  for  us  and  to  keep  the  accounts. 
Then,  you  see,  when  I  went  to  engage  an  orches- 
tra, or  a  quartette,  or  anybody,  I  could  talk  busi- 
ness. I  did  not  have  to  say  that  if  the  night 
were  good  they  would  have  so  much,  and  if  it 
were  bad  we  could  only  pay  the  expenses.  I 
said  'twenty  dollars,'  or  'thirty  dollars,'  or  'fifty 
dollars,'  or  whatever,  and  they  knew  I  meant  it. 
We  controlled  the  hall.  All  we  had  to  pay  for 
that,  —  well,  you  know  about  that,  —  was  light 
and  heat,  and  our  per  cent  to  Mr.  Nourse  on 
his  plant.  And  then,  —  well,  these  people  are 
not  fools  ;  they  know  a  good  thing  from  a  bad 
one ;  and  all  that  was  needed  was,  that  we 
should  be  able  to  make  to  them  fair  proposals, 
to  pay  them  money  in  advance,  if  the  poor  fel- 
lows needed  it,  but,  above  all  things,  to  pay 
them  on  the  nail,  as  soon  as  they  had  given 
their  entertainment." 

Sheridan  added,  modestly  enough,  that  there 
was  a  good  deal  in  approaching  these  people  in 
the  right  way.  He  said:  "I  might  have  stroked 
all  the  fur  back,  and  had  them  all  dislike  me. 
As  it  stands,  do  you  know,  I  think  they  like 
me  better  than  almost  any  person  they  have  to 


194  "OW    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

deal  with.  I  have  never  cheated  them,  a.s  some 
'impressarios'  would  have  done,  by  making  very 
large  promises,  which  they  could  never  fulfil.  I 
have  never  degraded  them  by  speaking  as  if  I 
were  hiring  them  for  some  menial  service.  I 
have  always  seen  that,  when  they  came  here, 
they  should  be  treated  as  well  as  a  clergyman 
would  be  if  he  came  here.  I  have  always  made 
them  understand  that  I  considered  them  as 
co-operating  with  the  best  people  of  this  place, 
for  the  highest  interests  of  this  place.  I  have 
made  it  my  business  to  see  that  they  were  cour- 
teously and  cordially  treated  by  our  best  citi- 
zens when  they  were  here,  and  I  tried  to  make 
Hampton  so  agreeable  to  them  that  they  would 
want  to  come  again.  The  consequence  is  that 
they  like  to  come  ;  they  will  put  themselves  out 
of  the  way  to  come  here  for  me,  even  though  I 
pay  them  much  less  than  they  are  paid  in  some 
other  places.  You  can  not,  Mr.  Freeman,"  he 
said,  in  conclusion,  "  overestimate  the  advan- 
tage of  dealing  with  authority  in  a  permanent 
position,  so  that  you  can  look  forward  and  re- 
member the  past  as  well,  and,  above  all  things, 
the  advantage  of  having  some  money  in  the 
pocket." 

I  said,  with  some  admiration  of  the  man,  that 
they  also  had  the  great  advantage  of  a  stage 
manager  who  did  not  want  to  be  paid.     Sheridan 


ENTERTAINMENT.  I95 

laughed,  and  took  the  compliment  good-na- 
turedly. 

"I  like  to  see  the  thing  well  done.  I  had 
talked  about  such  a  thing  for  years,  and  I  meant 
to  make  it  succeed,  now  I  had  a  chance.  But 
the  others  backed  me  up  well.  That  little  Miss 
Stevens,  now, — there's  a  great  deal  more  of 
her  than  you  think  for.  And  then,  the  people 
themselves,  they  meant  to  have  it  succeed.  I 
tell  you,  it  was  Democracy  applied  to  Entertain- 
ment, just  as  the  whole  business  here  is  Demo- 
cracy applied  to  spinning  and  weaving.  The 
secret  of  Democracy  in  anything,  Mr.  Freeman, 
is  not  any  magic  written  down  on  a  sheet  of 
paper,  and  called  a  constitution.  It  is  that 
everybody  wants  the  machine  to  move,  and  so 
makes  it  move,  and  does  his  share.  That  is 
just  what  those  people  saw.  They  paid  their 
money  freely,  because  they  knew  it  was  their 
concern.  They  did  not  care  for  profit  so  much 
as  they  cared  for  success. 

*'  Well !  I  started  from  the  first  for  variety. 
And  I  never  pretended  to  be  instructive.  I 
told  Miss  Jane  Stevens  to  keep  her  instruction 
at  school,  —  that  she  was  to  be  made  to  laugh 
herself,  —  that  we  were  to  entertain  them.  She's 
no  fool,  and  she  laughed  and  said  that  was  all 
right,  —  and  she  has  been  a  real  help,  as  I  tell 
you.     Variety,    I    said,    and   all   entertainment, 


196  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMILTON. 

and  do  not  be  too  grand.  For  the  autumn  and 
winter,  we  tried  first  for  two  entertainments  a 
week,  and  afterwards  for  three.  But  we  also 
tried  not  to  interfere.  If  they  wanted,  at  the 
church,  to  have  a  lecture  or  meeting  or  anything, 
they  let  us  know  in  advance,  and  we  kept  out 
of  their  way.  'Courses.''  Oh,  yes,  —  we  have 
some  courses.  A  good  course  is  a  good  thing. 
It  is  a  mutual  insurance,  —  a  good  night  takes 
care  of  a  bad  one,  and  a  bright  speaker  draws, 
if  you  have  made  a  mistake,  and  engaged  a  dull 
one  for  another  evening.  But  we  were  not 
limited  to  courses.  We  kept  our  eyes  open,  and 
our  ears.  If  a  man,  or  a  troupe,  or  a  band,  were 
coming  to  Wentworth  or  to  Norwich,  we  let 
them  understand  that  there  was  sure  pay,  if 
not  quite  so  much,  if  they  would  come  round 
to  us.  We  would  have  them  Monday,  —  that 
was  all  the  same  to  us.  But  perhaps  you  do 
not  know  that  Monday  is  a  bad  day  for  show- 
men generally." 

In  this  way,  partly  because  Mr.  Sheridan  and 
his  committee  had  the  eclat  of  a  new  beginning, 
the  first  season  was  very  profitable,  and  the 
trustee-treasurer  had  quite  a  sum  in  hand  at 
the  end  of  the  first  winter.  Then  it  was  that, 
to  the  surprise  of  every  one,  he  announced  a 
change  of  base,  and  carried  it  in  his  committee. 
He  proposed  that  three-fourths  of  this  money 


ENTERTAINMENT.  I97 

should  be  spent  for  the  open-air  entertainments 
of  the  summer.  So  much  help  was  to  be  given 
to  the  ball-club  and  the  tennis-club.  So  much 
was  to  be  spent  for  evening  concerts  in  the 
square.  And,  as  the  money  was  everybody's 
money,  it  was  agreed  that  a  part  of  it  should  be 
used  to  negotiate  with  the  railroad  companies, 
to  provide  for  two  all-day  excursions,  by  which 
those  who  started  early  and  returned  late  might 
have  a  long  day  at  Sachem's  Head,  on  the  Sound. 

"In  the  end,"  Sheridan  said,  "the  excursions 
have  not  cost  us  one  cent.  I  mean  the  people 
have  bought  tickets  enough  to  pay  for  the  whole 
thing.  But  it  is  with  the  railroad  as  it  is  with 
the  orchestras.  They  want  a  sure  thing.  They 
are  glad  enough  to  sell  me  a  train,  and  to  sell  it 
to  me  low,  if  I  have  the  money.  But  if  it  comes 
to  'if  and  'perhaps,' — if  they  are  to  take  the 
risk, — why,  they  want  the  possible  profit,  as 
well  as  the  possible  loss.  So  I  never  have  of- 
fered them  any  doubtful  enterprise.  I  have 
said,  '  I  will  take  four  cars,  or  six,'  as  the  case 
may  be.  And  you  can  see  that,  after  one  suc- 
cess, we  are  wellnigh  sure.  If  we  were  not 
sure,  why,  we  have  something  in  the  bank  to 
fall  back  upon. 

"  Now,"  he  said,  "  I  am  really  well  known 
among  the  large  fraternity  of  people  who  amuse 
and  entertain  the  rest  of  the  world.     The  right 


198  HOW    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

sort  know  mc.  They  address  me ;  I  do  not 
have  to  hunt  them  up.  They  know  the  terms 
are  cash  down,  but  they  also  know  that  we  shall 
stand  no  nonsense.  In  these  last  years  we  have 
had  the  hall  open  nearly  sixty  times  in  three 
months,  from  November  first  to  February,  and 
in  the  other  months  almost  as  often.  And  we 
have  had  some  of  the  best  talent  in  the  country 
here.  Two  secrets,  Mr.  Freeman,  —  cash  on 
the  nail  and  constant  variety.  But  we  could 
never  have  had  the  cash  had  it  not  been  Democ- 
racy applied  to  Entertainment." 


This  matter  of  public  amusement  or  enter- 
tainment played  so  important  a  part  in  the 
social  life  of  this  little  community  that  we  fre- 
quently came  round  to  it  in  conversation.  From 
all  my  nearest  friends  there  I  heard  a  good  deal 
about  the  practical  working  of  their  plans.,  and 
I  satisfied  myself  that  Sheridan  had  not  over- 
stated either  their  success  or  their  importance. 

In  any  such  enterprise  as  this,  the  perma- 
nency of  the  population  is  a  matter  to  be  very 
carefully  provided  for.  It  is,  indeed,  quite  essen- 
tial that  the  greater  part  of  the  community  shall 
remain  where  they  are,  shall  maintain  the  local 
pride  or  esprit  de  corps  of  the  place,  and  that 
thus  the  works  shall  train  their  own  workmen, 


ENTERTAINMENT.  I99 

as  Spinner  once  and  again  said  to  me.  In  all 
that  I  had  learned  about  the  store,  I  had  seen 
that  its  success  absolutely  depended  on  its  free- 
dom from  any  vagary  of  public  opinion,  which 
should  set  any  considerable  number  of  those 
who  shared  in  it  upon  some  emigration  project, 
for  which  they  would  want  to  withdraw,  of  a  sud- 
den, their  capital.  The  danger  of  removal  was 
distinctly  visible  here,  but,  as  Holmes  said  again 
and  again,  it  was  just  as  great  in  every  other 
relation  of  their  life,  and  their  success  was  al- 
ways just  as  much  impaired  by  the  "  flitting  " 
of  good  hands,  though  the  danger  might  not  be 
so  apparent  upon  the  surface.  "  New  men  do  not 
care  anything  about  you."  "New  hands  take 
on  airs."  "  New  hands  spoil  the  machinery." 
"New  hands,  —  new  ways."  Such  saws  were 
repeated  to  me  again  and  again. 

"  I  do  not  say,"  said  Spinner,  "that  I  want  to 
build  up  a  community  of  my  namesakes  here, 
or  of  weavers.  I  don't  take  much  stock  in  Mr. 
Atkinson's  theory  of  the  heredity  of  good  weav- 
ing. However  that  may  be,  I  want  the  boys 
and  girls  to  choose  the  calling  that  God  made 
them  for,  whatever  that  may  be.  But  among 
those  callings  open  to  them,  is  this  of  weaving 
good  woollen  cloth.  It  is  an  honorable  and 
profitable  way  of  serving  the  world,  as  honor- 
able and  profitable  as  any.     I  do  mean  that  my 


200  now    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

boys  and  girls  shall  not  be  ashamed  of  their 
father's  business,  and  that  if  they  use  it,  they 
shall  can')'  it  on  to  advantage.  They  may  go  on 
a  wander-tour  if  they  want  to,  as  lads  like  to  do, 
when  their  time  comes.  But  I  want  to  have 
them  come  back  here,  and  I  want  to  have  this 
place  as  attractive  as  any  place  they  will  find." 

Substantially  the  same  thing  was  said  by  the 
other  leaders  of  the  little  community.  And  they 
were  young  enough  themselves,  and  remem- 
bered enough  of  their  own  youth,  to  know  what 
would  make  a  town  attractive  to  young  people, 
and  what  were  the  features  of  its  life  to  which 
the  memory  of  a  wanderer  would  return.  They 
knew  that  its  social  attractions  would  count  for 
more  than  money  wages,  and  for  more  than  any 
prospect,  even,  of  rapid  promotion.  To  have 
"  had  a  good  time,"  as  the  happy  old  English  of 
Dryden's  time  put  it,  —  this  is  a  thing  which 
young  people  remember,  and  to  the  renewal  of 
it  they  look  forward. 

And  I  was  well  pleased  one  day  to  find  that 
Mr.  Sherlock  took  the  same  view.  He  picked 
me  up,  with  my  basket  of  fish,  one  day  when  he 
was  driving,  and  he  talked  to  me  very  seriously 
of  all  this.  He  told  me  that  he  had  an  excellent 
set  of  young  people  in  Hampton,  and  that  he 
ascribed  that  very  much  to  the  watchful  care 
which  had  been  kept,  from  the  beginning  almost, 


ENTERTAINMENT.  201 

over  the  public  entertainments  of  the  young. 
"  Lead  us  not  into  temptation  "  means  a  great 
deal.  And  he  declared  that  the  temptations 
opened  to  young  life,  in  the  carelessness  which 
too  often  neglects  this  matter  in  the  cities  and 
towns  of  the  country,  seemed  to  him  to  be  the 
enemies  of  Christian  life  most  frequent,  most 
subtle,  and  most  to  be  dreaded.  If  he  probed 
to  the  bottom  the  history  of  the  moral  decline 
and  ruin  of  any  young  man  or  young  woman,  he 
was  most  apt  to  find  that  in  the  good-natured 
negligence  in  which  parents  had  left  boy  or  girl 
to  hear  or  to  see  this  or  that,  which  broke  up 
all  early  principles  of  purity,  was  to  be  found 
the  beginning  of  the  difficulty.  Sheridan  was 
right  when  he  told  the  people  to  overcome  evil 
with  good.  There  was  nothing  else  to  overcome 
it  with,  and  the  field  in  which  he  was  at  work 
was  by  no  means  insignificant. 


w 


CHAPTER  XII. 

TEMPERANCE. 

E  were  sitting  in  the  counting-room  one 
day,  when  both  Mr.  Spinner  and  Mr. 
Workman  seemed  to  have  finished  their  after- 
noon work,  and  I  asked  them  how  they  coped 
with  the  great  devil  of  all. 

"You  mean  liquor."  It  was  Workman  who 
replied.  "Well,  we  try  to  overcome  evil  with 
good.  All  the  conditions  are  in  our  favor,  and 
we  have  had  more  success  than  I  would  have 
dared  to  hope. 

"In  the  first  place,  —  well,  I  do  not  know  as 
you  know  I  have  the  whole  responsibility  of  the 
help  ;  our  friend  Spinner  does  not  interfere  with 
me  there,  —  I  will  not  have  a  drinking  man  or 
woman  on  the  premises." 

"  Plenty  of  them  apply,"  said  Spinner,  groan- 
ing. "Show  Mr.  Freeman  that  letter  which 
you  had  from  Dr.  Good  —  " 

"  No,  I  will  not  stop  to  show  it  to  him.  But 
I  will  tell  him.  It  was  a  letter  begging  me 
to  take  a  family  here  which  was  broken  down 
because  the  man  could  not  keep  from  whiskey. 


TEMPERANCE.  203 

Dr.  Good  had  lectured  here,  he  knew  his  friend 
could  have  no  whiskey  here,  and  he  wanted  to 
send  him  to  us  as  to  a  hospital. 

"I  do  not  know  what  you  will  think,  but  I 
would  not  take  him,  though  I  believe  he  under- 
stood his  business.  I  am  not  sure  if  I  was  right. 
I  wrote  Dr.  Good  the  best  letter  I  could,  but  I 
did  not  quite  satisfy  myself. 

"  But  the  ground  I  take  is,  that  I  must  care 
first  for  these  children  and  young  people  on  the 
ground.  I  will  not  lead  them  into  temptation, 
and  the  difficulty  is  so  tremendous  that  I  will  be 
on  the  guard  everywhere." 

Workman  spoke  with  so  much  feeling  that  I 
have  no  doubt  there  was  a  skeleton  somewhere 
in  his  own  house,  reminding  him  of  his  duty  in 
this  matter,  as  there  is,  indeed,  in  most  houses. 

"Literature  is  bad  enough,"  he  went  on  to 
say.  "  The  descriptions  of  drinking,  as  if  it 
were  the  crowning  height  of  a  man's  life,  the 
talk  of  wine,  as  if  it  were  the  highest  article  of 
manufacture,  —  and  this  in  good  books,  which 
the  young  people  ought  to  read,  —  this  makes  a 
sort  of  mysterious  joy  hang  over  the  thing,  which 
the  devil  must  delight  in.  The  newspapers,  as 
you  know,  are  quite  unreliable  about  it.  Read 
between  the  lines,  and  see  if  the  man  who  re- 
ported Neal  Dow  did  not  write  out  his  notes  in  a 
bar-room.     My  boys  and  girls  have  to  meet  all 


204  ^'O^V    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

that,  at  the  best.  And  I  did  not  want  to  have  a 
man  here  who  might  be  devising  plans  to  bring 
liquor  in,  or  even  going  down  to  Wentworth  with 
one  of  the  young  men  to  see  what  they  could 
find  there. 

"  I  run  this  mill  as  a  place  for  the  working- 
men  and  women  first.  After  we  have  done  this," 
he  said,  laughing,  "  if  we  can  turn  out  a  few  yards 
of  Hampton  A  No.  i,  why,  I  do  so,  because 
Spinner  there  is  so  eager  about  it.  But,  on  the 
whole,  that  is  of  little  consequence  in  compari- 
son. And,  Mr.  Freeman,  when  you  can  get 
Congress  to  understand  that  the  principal  busi- 
ness they  have  in  hand,  or  any  honest  man,  is 
that  same  affair,  —  namely,  that  the  people  of 
this  country  shall  be  decent  men  and  women, 
living  in  happy  homes, — you  will  have  made  a 
great  step.  Your  tariff  legislation,  all  your 
revenue  legislation,  all  your  legislation  on  post- 
office  and  telegraph,  for  a  little  instance,  ought 
to  turn  on  that,  and  that  only. 

"Well,  to  come  back  to  your  question.  I 
think  all  the  conditions  are  in  our  favor,  as  I 
said.  It  was  a  great  thing  that,  for  years,  each 
man  and  woman  had  to  scrimp  and  save  one- 
quarter  of  his  wages  really,  —  that  is  to  say,  was 
compelled  to  save  it,  and  to  deposit  it,  instead 
of  having  it  to  spend.  That  put  us  on  a  very 
economical  style  of  living  at  first,  and  whiskey 


TEMPERANCE.  205 

must  go,  even  tobacco  largely,  because  we  had 
so  little  money,  any  of  us. 

"  In  the  second  place,  almost  all  the  leaders  — 
I  mean  the  men  with  families,  who  would  be  apt 
to  stick  fast  and  make  up  public  sentiment  — 
were  dready  total  abstainers.  This  happened 
from  the  law  of  selection.  For  nobody  could 
well  join  us  to  go  to  work  on  three-quarter 
wages,  unless  he  had  something  laid  up  in  the 
bank.  And  a  drinking  man  is  not  apt  to  have  a 
large  bank  account. 

"  Then,  so  soon  as  we  got  on  the  eight-hour 
time  schedule,  nobody  had  the  plea,  which  is  a 
perfectly  just  plea,  of  exhaustion.  No  man  had 
a  *  pocket-pistol,'  or  wanted  to  step  round  to  a 
saloon  because  he  was  dead  beat  out  by  being  on 
his  feet  all  day,  or  by  whatever  else  he  had  had 
to  do.  Family  men  went  home  ;  the  boys,  by 
which  I  mean  all  the  younger  hands,  went  round 
to  their  clubs,  or  to  the  reading-room,  or  to  the 
gymnasium,  after  Sheridan  started  it,  or  to  play 
ball,  or  croquet,  or  tennis.  The  open  air  is 
always  a  good  stimulus.  What  did  that  old 
Quaker  say  to  you.  Spinner  .-'  " 

"  He  said,  '  Tell  them  to  plant  trees.  Interest 
them  in  planting  trees.  They  will  become  so 
excited  and  fascinated  as  they  watch  the  trees 
that  they  will  have  no  disposition  to  drink.' 
Dear  old  soul !  He  judged  everybody  by  himself." 


206  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

"Yes,"  said  Workman,  "but  there  was  an 
element  of  truth  in  the  remark,  as  old  Dr.  Con- 
verse used  to  say.  Keep  a  young  fellow  in  high 
exercise,  in  good  health,  and  in  open  air,  and  the 
temptation  of  liquor  is  reduced  to  a  minimum. 
After  three  or  four  generations  of  such  life  there 
will  be  little  or  none." 

"  We  encourage,  in  every  way,  —  I  think  Miss 
Jane  Stevens  and  Mr.  Ledger  have  shown  you 
that,  —  all  associations  of  the  young  people  which 
will  give  the  stimulus  of  society  in  place  of  the 
stimulus  of  liquor.  The  mistake  about  such 
things  is,  that  your  Useful  Knowledge  kind  of 
people  think  that  everybody  wants  to  be  learn- 
ing something  all  the  time.  That  is  all  non- 
sense. The  appetite  for  learning  can  be  satis- 
fied, just  as  the  appetite  for  roast  beef  can  be 
satisfied, — and  when  it  is  satisfied,  it  is  non- 
sense to  try  to  revive  it  till  the  time  comes. 
Here  is  where  Dick  Sheridan  helps  us,  — more, 
perhaps,  than  he  thought  when  he  began.  He 
was  not  satisfied  that  the  boys  should  play 
cricket  and  base-ball,  without  giving  their  moth- 
ers and  sisters  and  sweethearts  comfortable 
shady  seats  where  they  could  sit  and  see  them. 
He  encouraged  with  all  his  might  the  Knights 
Templars,  so  that  they  established  that  restau- 
rant where  I  met  you  yesterday." 


TEMPERANCE.  20/ 

"  The  Take  it  Easy,'"  I  said  ;  "I  was  delighted 
with  the  name." 

They  both  laughed.  "  That  is  one  of  Dick's 
notions.  He  had  it  on  the  brain.  He  said  that 
the  hands  must  learn  not  to  hurry  when  they 
ate,  or  as  they  amused  themselves.  Well,  the 
Take  it  Easy  is  a  Co-operation  enterprise.  I 
really  believe  they  pay  a  dividend  at  the  end  of 
the  year  to  everybody  who  drinks  a  glass  of  soda 
or  eats  a  bowl  of  oysters.  Sheridan  joined  in 
with  the  Knights  with  all  his  zeal  to  have  it 
carried  through,  and  it  is  really  now  a  great  com- 
fort and  convenience  to  us  all. 

"  You  see  it  was  the  old  stage-house  of  the 
place,  even  before  there  were  any  mills  here. 
A  great  square  brick  tavern,  probably  a  great 
deal  too  large  at  its  best.  We  have  almost  no 
travellers  or  visitors.  In  the  old  regime  here, 
they  made  it  pay,  somehow,  by  keeping  the  bar 
pretty  active.     We  had  abolished  all  that. 

"Accordingly,  very  soon  after  we  were  in  full 
blast,  the  owners  came  to  me  to  know  what  we 
would  do  with  it.  I  did  not  choose  to  be  em- 
barrassed by  them  or  their  notions,  and  Spinner 
agreed  with  me.  We  took  it  off  their  hands  at 
a  very  low  price,  and  it  is  now  a  part  of  the 
property  of  this  company.  Then  we  took  the 
same  ground  which  we  took  about  the  store 
and  about  the  tenements.     We  meant  to  make 


208  now    TIIF.V    LIVED    I\    HAMPTON, 

our  money  by  manufacturing  goods.  Our  other 
]:)ropcrty  must  pay  us  the  '  idiot's  dividend  ' 
and  the  taxes.  So  the  Knights  Templars  under- 
took to  swing  this  thing.  They  have  their  own 
club-rooms  there,  —  they  have  a  chess-room, 
where  they  play  more  checkers  and  backgam- 
mon than  chess,  I  think,  —  they  have  a  billiard- 
room,  —  they  have  their  own  reading-room.  But 
gradually  the  restaurant  grew,  and  it  now  takes, 
as  you  saw,  the  whole  ground  floor.  The  men 
sit  there  and  talk  politics,  and  discuss  boat-races 
and  ball  games.  It  is  a  place  of  resort.  You 
can  order  something  to  drink,  just  as  in  old 
times.  But  it  is  one  of  Eaton's  fifty-seven  tem- 
perance drinks,  and  nobody  has  a  headache  the 
next  morning. 

"Eaton  sent  them  up  the  man  they  have  there, 
and  he  and  his  wife  have  a  genius  for  making 
the  place  attractive.  In  the  first  place,  their 
things  are  good.  Their  coffee  is  matchless,  and 
their  bouillon.  Well,  the  place  is  pretty,  —  there 
are  always  fresh  flowers,  and  in  summer  it  is 
cool,  and  in  winter  it  is  warm.  There  is  a  room 
where  the  women  can  look  in,  and  be  by  them- 
selves, and  have  a  cup  of  tea  if  they  choose. 
They  are  not  locked  out,  and  come  and  go  as  the 
rest  of  us  do.  That  gives  it  all  a  home  look. 
It  breaks  up  all  temptation  to  have  little  sepa- 
rate '  treats '  in  little  dirty  club-rooms,  that  Good- 


TEMPERANCE. 


209 


year  here  will  give  any  party  a  much  better 
entertainment  than  anybody  else  can,  and  it 
costs  them  less. 

"  Now,  observe,  all  this  goes  forward  as  a 
thing  of  course.  But  it  is  not  a  thing  of  course. 
You  do  not  usually  find  what  is  called  a  temper- 
ance hotel  to  approach  the  Take  it  Easy  in  ele- 
gance or  neatness  or  attractiveness.  But  noth- 
ing is  said  about  liquor,  more  than  anything 
would  be  said  about  opium  at  Delmonico's. 
They  would  not  assure  their  guests  there  that 
no  opium  was  served,  —  and  Goodyear  does  not 
assure  his  guests  that  no  liquor  is  served. 
'They  take  it  for  granted,'  he  says,  —  '  they  take 
it  for  granted  that  I  know  how  to  keep  a  place 
of  resort  for  gentlemen.'  " 

So  much  for  what  Workman  meant  by  over- 
coming evil  by  good.  But  all  of  them  said,  very 
seriously,  that  an  active  temperance  "propa- 
ganda "  was  necessary,  all  the  same.  Holmes 
said  to  me  that  he  knew  what  temptations  his 
boys  and  girls  were  to  meet,  and  he  wanted  them 
to  be  forewarned.  They  had  the  best  temperance 
speakers,  and  had  them  often.  The  Women's 
Christian  Temperance  Union  had  a  branch  there, 
the  Templars,  and  some  of  the  ether  societies. 
The  boys  and  girls  grew  up  with  the  feeling  that 
when  they  left  Hampton  to  live  in  larger  places, 
where  there  was  much  temptation,  and  where 


2IO  HOW    TIIF.V    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

they  saw  the  open  sale  of  liquor  at  the  bar,  that 
they  were,  in  some  sort,  the  apostles  of  a  new 
order.  They  had  something  of  the  j^ride  which 
the  graduate  of  a  well-equipped  college  has,  when 
he  descends  among  what  he  thinks,  for  the  time, 
inferior  people. 

They  wanted,  if  they  could,  to  do  their  part 
in  extending  a  system  which  they  had  learned 
to  love.  If  they  had  not  had  this  positive  wish 
to  be  of  use  in  the  temperance  cause,  all  the 
negative  effect  of  the  plans  which  had  been 
made  for  them  would  have  been  useless.  But, 
as  they  did  wish  to  help  their  comrades,  they 
themselves  were  the  more  sure. 


CHAPTER   XIII. 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK. 


UNDER  the  old  order  of  things  at  Hamp- 
ton, before  Thankful  Nourse  and  Spinner 
bought  the  property,  there  had  been  an  old- 
fashioned  Savings  Bank.  Such  institutions 
have  been  very  generally  established  in  the 
New  England  factory-towns,  to  the  very  great 
advantage  of  all  concerned.  The  administra- 
tion of  them  has  generally  been  careful  and 
honorable.  The  supervision  by  the  authorities 
of  the  states  is  severe  and  close,  and  there  have 
not  been  many  instances  in  which  the  depositors 
have  lost  anything  by  the  infidelity  of  the  cus- 
todians or  by  their  carelessness.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  custom  of  depositing  money  even  in 
very  small  sums  in  these  banks  has  become  gen- 
eral, it  would  be  almost  fair  to  say  universal. 
In  the  state  of  Massachusetts,  with  a  population 
of  1,976,264,  there  were  last  year  906,039  dif- 
ferent accounts  in  these  institutions.  This 
shows  that  almost  every  working  man  and 
working  woman  must  have  had  an  account  in 
one  of  them  or  another.     The  average  sum  to 


212  HOW    THEV    LIVED    IX    HAMPTON. 

the  credit  of  each  depositor  was  ^321.00,  the 
largest  deposit  permitted  by  the  law  being 
$5000.00.  The  total  amount  was  $291,197,- 
900.96.^  Persons  who  have  more  money  to 
deposit  are  expected  to  place  it  in  other  invest- 
ments. 

The  success  of  the  savings  bank  system  in 
America  is  largely  due  to  the  spirit  in  which  it 
was  conceived.  The  history  of  these  banks 
shows  that  they  were  not  founded  in  the  miser- 
able idea  of  some  bold  speculator,  who  foresaw 
the  immense  sums  which  would  be  at  the  direc- 
tion of  their  managers,  and  was  eager  to  con- 
trol the  investment  of  these  funds.  They  were, 
on  the  other  hand,  set  on  foot  by  high-minded 
Christian  people,  who  were  eager  in  their  wish 
to  improve  the  condition  of  poor  people,  to  give 
to  them  the  same  rights  in  the  use  of  their  little 
earnings  which  the  rich  had  in  the  use  of  theirs, 
and  to  encourage,  in  whatever  way  might  be 
possible,  habits  of  prudence  among  the  work- 
people around  them.  It  is  the  proud  boast  of 
one  of  the  associations  of  clergymen  in  Massa- 
chusetts that  the  savings  bank  of  the  county, 
one  of  the  oldest  in  the  state,  was  created  by 
the  inspiration  given  at  a  "Minister's  Meeting," 
as  the  phrase  of  New  England  calls  the  meeting 

1  The  figures  are  for  1886. 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK.  21 3 

of  the  association.^  The  plan  was  proposed  by 
the  wife  of  one  of  the  ministers,  herself  in  at- 
tendance. She  had  read  of  the  success  of  a 
similar  plan  set  on  foot  among  the  philanthropic 
people  of  England. 

In  this  spirit,  to  borrow  Mr.  Sherlock's  text 
again,  those  who  had  succeeded  in  business  life 
are  willing  to  bear  the  burdens  of  those  who  are 
yet  to  begin  it.  And  to  their  willingness  is  due 
the  willingness  of  men  of  great  business  ability 
to  give  their  time  and  care  to  the  administration 
of  these  trusts,  without  compensation.  It  is 
considered  almost  a  point  of  honor  among  mer- 
cantile men  or  bankers  of  ability  and  position, 
to  do  their  part  in  the  proper  supervision  of  the 
savings  banks  of  their  towns.  It  will  some- 
times happen,  undoubtedly,  that  a  needy  adven- 
turer thinks  it  would  be  a  good  plan  to  establish 
a  new  savings  bank,  of  which  he  may  be  the 
acting  manager,  with  a  good  salary  and  the 
advantages  which  fall  to  a  man  who  directs 
large  investments.  But  if  the  bank  is  to  suc- 
ceed, it  must  be  able  to  show  the  names  of  a 
board  of  directors  respected  in  the  community 
for  business  sagacity  and  honor.  The  adven- 
turer who  proposes  it  may  sing  never  so  sweetly, 
and  advertise  never  so  widely.     His  bank  will 

1  The  Worcester  Association. 


214  HOW    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

not  attract  many  depositors  until  they  know  who 
is  to  have  tlic  oversight  of  their  money. 

The  direction  of  savings  banks,  then,  so 
that  the  depositors  may  be  sure  of  a  fair  in- 
come, and  that  their  funds  are  not  wasted, 
becomes  one  of  the  unpaid  pubhc  duties  of 
Christian  men,  who  know  that  all  their  time 
and  talents  are  given  to  them  as  a  trust,  and 
who  mean  to  use  that  trust  for  the  benefit  of 
their  fellows. 

The  little  bank  at  Hampton,  under  the  old  ad- 
ministration of  the  mills  there,  had  been  well  ad- 
ministered, and  had  kept  its  fair  share  of  deposits 
from  the  savings  of  the  work-people.  But  when 
hard  times  came,  as  the  pay-days  were  more 
uncertain,  and  when  at  last  the  old  company 
failed,  the  people  had  moved  away,  one  after 
another,  and  had,  of  course,  withdrawn  their 
deposits,  — perhaps,  alas  !  to  pay  the  charges  of 
moving ;  or,  at  best,  to  deposit  them  in  banks 
nearer  to  their  new  homes.  As  the  managers 
of  the  mills  left,  they  had  withdrawn,  so  soon  as 
they  could,  from  their  places  on  the  board  of 
administration,  and  the  Savings  Bank  was  little 
more  than  a  name  and  a  sign  on  the  wall  of  the 
bank  building,  when  the  renewal  of  Hampton 
began. 

Mr.  Spinner  told  me  that,  as  soon  as  he  got 
the   machinery  into   working   order,    he   called 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK.  21  5 

Mr.  Nourse's  attention  to  the  necessity  of 
awakening  new  confidence  in  the  bank,  and 
found,  to  his  satisfaction,  that  he  saw  the  neces- 
sity plainly.  Whatever  else  he  thought  visionary 
or  fanciful,  in  the  notions  and  wishes  of  these 
working  people,  he  did  not  think  any  plans  for 
saving  money  fanciful.  He  knew  too  well  that 
he  should  never  have  been  a  capatalist  had  he 
not,  as  he  said,  "salted  down  "  ten  per  cent  of 
his  income,  since  he  had  sold  a  string  of  trout 
at  a  hotel  for  a  quarter  of  a  dollar.  On  Mr. 
Spinner's  appeal,  therefore,  he  agreed  to  be 
one  of  the  trustees  of  the  bank,  knowing  that 
he  could  attend  to  that  duty  without  personal 
attendance  at  all  the  meetings  of  the  managers. 
And  he  interested  himself  personally  in  induc- 
ing gentlemen  of  position,  character,  and  means 
in  the  neighborhood,  to  take  necessary  trust 
and  care  of  its  management.  When  they  took 
the  bank  in  hand,  the  deposits  were  at  the  very 
lowest  ebb.  Be,  with  the  improvement  in  the 
prosperity  of  Hampton,  the  working  men  and 
women,  and  even  the  children,  began  to  open 
their  accounts.  The  bank  received  as  small 
sums  as  five  cents  at  a  time,  and  began  to  allow 
interest  on  the  first  of  every  month  after  the 
deposit  was  made.  It  does  not  take  long  to 
teach  young  people  what  is  the  value  of  an 
arrangement  by  which  their  little  wealth  grows 


2l6  now    TllEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON, 

while  they  are  asleep,  or  seems  to  do  so.  And, 
with  the  steadiness  of  management,  and  the  evi- 
dent care  taken  of  their  property  by  men  who 
were  among  the  most  distinguished  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, almost  all  the  people  of  Hampton  were 
disposed  to  place  their  earnings,  as  far  as  they 
could  save  them,  for  a  few  months  in  the  keep- 
ing of  the  savings  bank. 

Spinner  said  that,  so  far,  their  experience  was 
only  the  same  as  that  of  hundreds  of  other  insti- 
tutions of  the  same  kind  in  different  parts  of  the 
northern  states,  and  he  said  that  he  did  not 
know  but  that  their  bank  would  have  remained 
exactly  like  all  other  American  savings  banks, 
but  from  the  accident  that  they  had  a  German 
named  Scheffer  at  the  head  of  the  dyeing- 
room.  Scheffer  came  to  Spinner  one  day  in 
a  good  deal  of  indignation,  and  it  was  some 
time  before  Spinner  found  out  what  the  matter 
was.  The  German  had  been  a  depositor  in  the 
bank  from  the  very  beginning,  and  this,  Spinner, 
who  was  one  of  the  directors,  knew  perfectly 
well.  His  wife  was  another,  a  nephew  he  had 
was  another,  a  grown-up  son  had  a  small  de- 
posit, and  one  or  two  of  the  children  had  bank 
books  also,  with  their  little  savings  entered 
upon  them.  Spinner  had  always  supposed  that 
Scheffer  was  one  of  the  people  best  satisfied 
with  the  arrangements  of  the  bank,  as  he  had 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK.  21/ 

often  heard  him  speak,  in  a  cordial  way,  of  the 
simphcity  and  dignity  with  which  its  business 
was  conducted.  He  was  all  the  more  surprised 
on  this  particular  occasion,  which  proved  to  be  a 
critical  occasion,  to  find  that  Scheffer  was  in  a 
rage  with  the  whole  management  of  the  institu- 
tion, had  given  notice  that  he  should  with- 
draw his  funds  on  the  first  possible  day  when 
he  had  the  right  to  do  so,  and  that  every  one  in 
his  room  would  do  the  same.  Spinner  soothed 
him  as  well  as  he  could,  made  him  tell  the 
whole  story  from  the  beginning  to  the  end, 
and  then  was  amazed  to  find  that  the  German 
was  disappointed  and  disgusted  because  the 
treasurer  of  the  bank  had  refused  to  discount 
a  little  note  for  him. 

Spinner  at  once  entered  on  an  explanation, 
in  as  moderate  and  gentle  language  as  he 
could,  to  show  his  German  friend  that  such  a 
thing  was  utterly  unheard  of  in  the  savings 
banks  of  New  England  as  a  small  discount 
on  a  small  note,  given  on  personal  security. 
He  tried  to  make  Scheffer  understand  that 
the  general  policy,  from  the  beginning  of 
these  institutions,  had  been  to  avoid  any  re- 
semblance to  the  working  of  the  ordinary  banks 
of  discount,  and  that  they  had  been  adminis- 
tered also  as  trust  funds,  in  which,  naturally 
enough,   the    larger    the  investment    the  better 


2l8  HOW    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

for  the  persons  concerned,  because  there  is  the 
less  expense  of  handling  and  oversight.  He 
cited  to  him  that  remark  of  Josiah  Quincy's, 
which  has  been  already  quoted  in  another  part 
of  this  essay.  He  said,  with  some  humor,  that 
the  palaces  of  Boston  were  built  with  the 
money  of  the  servant-girls  of  Boston.  It  is 
perfectly  true  that  those  servant-girls  have 
given  to  the  great  savings  banks  the  money 
which  those  banks  lend  out,  on  the  perfect 
security  of  mortgages,  on  the  palaces  of  which 
Mr.  Ouincy  was  speaking.  Spinner  tried  to 
explain  to  his  angry  friend  that  if  he  wanted  a 
little  money,  he  himself  would  gladly  be  his 
security  on  a  note  which  he  could  carry  to  the 
nearest  bank  of  discount,  which  was  at  Went- 
worth,  the  large  town  of  the  neighborhood. 
He  told  him  that  he  would  find  that  he  was 
perfectly  well  known  to  the  directors  there, 
and  that  they  would  be  very  glad  to  accommo- 
date him,  if  he  would  take  such  a  note  as  he 
proposed.  Spinner  said  to  him  :  "  I  had  occa- 
sion to  borrow  a  little  money  a  fortnight  ago, 
and  I  went  over  there,  with  a  note  indorsed 
by  Freeman,  and  they  lent  me  the  money  gladly. 
That  is  what  they  are  for,  and  that  is  the  place 
for  you  to  go  to." 

Scheffer  was  toned   down   a   little    when    he 
found  that  his  character  had  not  been  intention- 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK.  219 

ally  assailed  by  the  treasurer  of  the  bank,  and 
was  soothed,  as  Spinner  persuaded  him  that  his 
reputation  had  extended  as  far  as  Wentworth 
and  farther.  But  when  the  first  tempest  of  his 
rage  was  over,  he  continued  to  talk  on  the 
subject,  and  to  show  what  he  thought  the  nar- 
rowness of  the  restriction  by  which  the  treas- 
urer had  been  bound.  He  then  told  Spinner, 
what  Spinner  told  me  he  did  not  know  before, 
that  in  his  own  country,  the  bank  of  savings 
where  he  made  his  deposits  would  have  been 
at  the  same  time  a  bank  of  discount,  not  in 
general  business,  but  restricted  to  a  business 
with  those  very  persons  who  made  the  deposits. 
He  explained  to  him  the  system,  simple  enough 
in  operation,  though  a  little  complicated  in  de- 
scription, by  which  the  bank  secured  itself  abso- 
lutely for  the  small  loans  which  it  made  to  its 
depositors.  It  might  happen  that  a  man  wanted, 
for  temporary  purposes,  such  as  the  furnishing 
of  his  house,  or  the  education  of  one  of  his 
children,  a  sum  of  money  larger  than  he  had 
himself  on  deposit  in  the  bank.  He  would  want 
to  borrow  this  money,  and  he  would  have  friends 
enough  among  the  other  depositors  who  were 
confident  in  his  integrity,  or  confident  in  the 
purpose  for  which  he  needed  the  funds,  to  assist 
him  with  their  credit,  as  far  as  it  would  go. 
What  is  the  measure  of  such  people's  credit  ? 


2  20  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

Clearly  enough  it  is,  so  far  as  the  bank  is  con- 
cerned, estimated  with  perfect  accuracy  by  the 
deposits  which  they  have  in  that  institution. 
If,  then,  Schcffcr  wanted  to  borrow  five  hundred 
dollars,  as  in  this  case  he  did  want  to  borrow 
that  amount,  if  he  had  on  deposit  only  three 
hundred  dollars,  the  bank  would,  with  perfect 
willingness,  lend  him  the  whole  sum,  if  he  would 
bring  them  a  note  signed  by  himself  and  by  two 
of  his  companions,  each  of  whom  had  deposits 
of  the  same  amount  with  his  own,  it  being 
understood  upon  the  face  of  the  note  that  they 
were  not  to  draw  upon  their  deposits  until  the 
note  was  paid,  and  that  the  note  constituted 
a  lien,  of  which  the  bank  could  avail  itself  as 
security  for  these  indorsements.  Of  course  no 
security  could  be  more  absolute.  The  bank 
itself  holds  the  very  property  from  which  the 
debt  could  be  paid,  if  it  should  prove  that  the 
indorsers  must  be  called  upon.  Scheffer  ex- 
plained to  Spinner,  what  Spinner  did  not  know, 
that  there  were  thousands  of  such  banks  in 
Germany,  carr)dng  on  the  double  business  of 
receiving  small  deposits,  and  making  small  loans 
to  the  depositors. 

It  is  perfectly  true  to  say,  in  theory,  that  the 
ordinary  New  England  system  comes  out  at 
the  same  thing.  In  the  ordinary  New  England 
system,  the  depositor  places  his  money  in  the 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK.  221 

savings  bank,  the  savings  bank  loans  the  money 
in  considerable  sums  to  capitalists  and  others 
who  handle  considerable  sums,  and  the  bank 
and  the  depositor  then  receive  the  advantage 
of  the  interest  paid  upon  such  loans.  If  it 
happens  that  the  depositor  wants  bank  accom- 
modation, he  goes  to  an  entirely  different  insti- 
tution, —  as  in  this  case  Schcffer  would  have  to 
go  to  the  bank  of  discount  at  Wentworth,  —  and 
he  avails  himself  there  of  such  credit  as  he  has, 
founded  upon  his  property  or  upon  his  reputa- 
tion, and  borrows  the  money  he  needs.  Or, 
without  borrowing  money,  he  withdraws  the 
whole  of  his  deposit,  uses  that  in  his  specula- 
tion, whatever  it  is,  and  when  the  speculation 
is  ended,  makes  his  deposit  anew.  But  it  is 
easy  to  see  that  all  this  means  in  practice  is, 
that  it  shall  be  difficult,  not  to  say  impossible, 
for  dealers  in  money  on  a  small  scale  to  obtain 
money  at  banks  of  discount.  The  banks  of 
discount  do  not  want  such  customers  ;  human 
nature  is  weak,  and  the  average  cashier  of  a 
bank  prefers  to  deal  with  large  custom^ers  than 
with  small  customers,  and  to  have  its  business 
conducted  in  large  sums  than  in  small  sums. 
In  practice,  therefore,  a  man  who  wants  to 
borrow  small  sums  of  money  is  obliged  to  bor- 
row, in  the  expensive  and  cumbrous  system 
which  sends  him  to  a  pawnbroker,  and  his  range 


222  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

of  credit  is  only  as  large  as  that  very  limited 
rang^c  which  can  be  represented  by  the  articles 
which  he  can  put  in  deposit  as  security  for  his 
loan. 

The  German  system,  on  the  other  hand,  gives 
to  the  man  exactly  the  credit  that  he  is  entitled 
to.  It  enables  his  friends,  though  they  be  in 
the  humblest  walks  of  life,  and  be  persons  of 
very  little  means,  to  come  to  his  assistance,  for 
whatever  purpose  he  needs  money,  just  as  far 
as  their  means  will  go  and  they  are  disposed. 
In  this  particular  case  of  Scheffer's,  where  his 
anger  had  been  so  intensely  excited  by  the 
refusal  of  the  treasurer,  he  had  offered  to  the 
treasurer  absolute  security  for  every  cent  he 
wanted  to  borrow,  and  had  offered  it  to  him  in 
the  very  simple  form  of  proposing  to  place  with 
him  the  bank  books  of  his  friends,  amounting 
to  a  sum  much  larger  than  that  he  proposed  to 
borrow.  The  treasurer  had  refused,  because  he 
was  not  in  the  habit  of  doing  such  things.  This 
reason,  usually  alleged  by  persons  in  such  posi- 
tions, had  not  satisfied  Scheffer,  and  hence  his 
towering  rage. 

It  was  in  every  way  desirable  to  conciliate 
Scheffer  in  this  particular  instance.  The  direc- 
tors of  the  bank  did  not  want  to  have  one  im- 
portant sub-department  of  the  bank  alienated, 
nor  did  they  want  to  have  the   German   part 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK.  223 

of  their  constituency  disaffected  to  their  man- 
agement. Mr.  Spinner,  therefore,  brought  the 
matter  up  at  the  next  directors'  meeting.  And, 
in  the  first  place,  it  was  voted  that  the  security 
offered  by  Mr.  Scheffer  for  the  loan  he  wanted 
was  entirely  satisfactory,  and  that  the  treasurer 
be  directed  to  lend  to  him  the  amount  he  asked 
for,  as  soon  as  he  had  that  amount  for  use. 
But,  what  was  much  more  important,  a  com- 
mittee was  appointed,  which  should  draw  up  a 
practicable  plan,  in  which  any  one  of  the  de- 
positors might  borrow  money  in  small  sums  if 
he  needed,  even  though  the  sum  asked  for  was 
larger  than  he  had  on  deposit  himself,  if  he 
offered  the  names,  as  his  indorsers,  of  men 
who  had  themselves  deposits  equal  to  the 
amount  borrowed ;  these  depositors  giving  the 
amount  they  had  in  the  bank  as  their  security 
for  the  fulfilment  of  their  obligation.  All  this, 
of  course,  made  it  necessary  to  open  some  new 
books,  and,  indeed,  developed  a  side  of  the 
bank  which  was  not  contemplated  in  the  sys- 
tem to  which  it  belonged.  But  it  did  not  prove 
that  it  required  any  new  legislation,  for  these 
banks  always  had  the  power  to  lend  money  on 
personal  security,  if  this  security  were  satisfac- 
tory to  the  directors,  and  were  such  that  they 
could  readily  call  in  the  amount  which  they  had 
lent,  when  the  exigencies  of  the  bank  required. 


224  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

Clearly  enough,  no  security  could  be  better  than 
that  which  these  directors  had,  for  the  funds  of 
the  indorsers  and  the  principal  were  in  their 
own  keeping,  and  they  were  responsible  for 
them. 

The  old-fashioned  theory,  in  favor  of  which 
much  may  be  said,  is,  that  it  is  not  well  to 
facilitate  the  borrowing  of  money  when  the  bor- 
rower is  poor.  The  proverb,  which,  though 
somewhat  irreverent,  is  quite  true,  might  have 
a  wider  application  to  advantage.  It  says  that 
"Debt  is  the  devil."  In  the  sense  intended,  it 
is  very  desirable  that  everybody,  the  rich  and 
the  poor,  should  take  to  heart  the  lesson  which 
is  involved  in  this  epigrammatic  expression. 
At  the  same  time,  as  every  man  of  affairs 
knows,  it  is  necessary  sometimes  that  a  man 
w^ho  has  no  ready  money,  but  has  other  prop- 
erty, should  be  able  to  borrow  ready  money  on 
the  security  of  that  property.  It  is  impossible 
to  give  any  fair  reason  why  this  privilege  should 
not  be  open  to  poor  men  as  it  is  open  to  rich 
men,  in  proportion  to  the  property  which  they 
have  to  offer  for  their  security.  The  poor  man 
is  as  eager  to  take  care  of  his  little  as  the  rich 
man  is  to  take  care  of  his  great.  Probably  it 
will  prove  that  the  poor  man  is  more  watchful 
over  the  sum  which  he  has  to  put  at  risk  than 
is  the  man  who  is  used  to  larger  advantages. 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK.  22  5 

In  such  a  case  as  we  had  under  our  eyes  at 
Hampton,  there  was  really  no  danger  that  the 
friends  and  neighbors  of  Scheffer  should  be  less 
anxious  for  the  security  of  their  little  property 
than  he  was  for  the  security  of  his.  They  did 
not  give  their  indorsements  without  such  con- 
sideration as  they  thought  sufficient.  It  was 
nobody's  business  what  those  considerations 
Vv^ere,  —  whether  they  were  considerations  of 
friendship,  gratitude,  or  some  greedy  hope  that 
in  the  future  he  would  do  the  like  by  them.  It 
was  nobody's  business  to  inquire  as  to  their 
motives,  or  as  to  what  the  result  would  be  to 
them.  So  far  as  the  bank  officers  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  matter,  they  had  to  pre- 
serve the  property  which  was  intrusted  to  them, 
and  to  invest  it  safely.  This  they  were  able  to 
do,  at  some  expense  of  worry  and  time  in  the 
account  keeping,  by  as  simple  an  arrangement 
as  that  which  was  adopted. 

And  it  had  not  proved  that  the  people  were 
misled  into  any  extravagant  speculations  by 
such  a  convenient  arrangement  for  borrowing 
small  sums  of  money.  Up  to  a  certain  point,  a 
man  of  good  reputation  and  established  position 
could  induce  fellow-depositors  to  indorse  his 
note  so  that  he  could  borrow  money.  But  he 
could  not  do  this  unless  he  showed  them  why 
he   wanted    the    money,   and    unless   they    had 


226  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

reason  to  believe  he  would  be  able  to  meet  his 
note  and  theirs  when  it  became  due.  The 
friends  whom  I  talked  with  had  satisfied  them- 
selves that  the  system  worked  well,  and  ex- 
pressed their  surprise  that  it  had  not  been  more 
generally  introduced  as  a  part  of  the  practice  of 
the  smaller  savings  banks  of  the  country. 

In  one  of  our  talks  about  the  bank  and  its 
results  I  asked  some  general  questions  about 
their  charities. 

Mr.  Spinner  said  in  reply  that  if  I  lived  with 
them  a  little  longer  I  should  see  that  they  were 
just  like  other  people,  and  that  they  did  not 
need  any  other  organization  of  charity  or  insti- 
tutions for  taking  care  of  the  sick  or  aged  than 
other  people  did.  "  Because  a  man  works  in  a 
mill,  he  is  not  a  different  sort  of  man.  Half 
the  absurdities  which  get  into  print  about  what 
they  call  the  'labor  problem,'  and,  worse  than 
that,  sometimes  come  into  disastrous  action, 
spring  from  this  notion,  that  the  world  is  di- 
vided into  men  and  women  and  'operatives.' 
*  Operatives '  is  a  Latin  word  which  has  been 
chosen  to  represent  this  outside  being,  who  is 
not  exactly  human.  Now  if  he  had  three  legs, 
or  two  mouths,  or  walked  on  his  head,  it  might 
be  all  right  to  classify  him  so,  and  to  provide 
for  him  separately.  But, — as  he  is  just  like 
other  men,  —  as  he  is  like  farmers  and  sailors 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK.  22^ 

and  lawyers,  it  seems  more  possible  to  treat 
him  as  other  men  are  treated,  and  not  to  un- 
dertake to  separate  him  off  into  a  class,  as  peo- 
ple call  it,  with  its  peculiar  institutions,  whether 
of  charity  or  government  or  other  arrangement 
of  civil  order." 

I  had  learned  by  this  time  that  this  was  a 
matter  about  which  Spinner  felt  rather  extrava- 
gantly, and  which  he  discussed  rather  warmly. 
I  had  no  wish  to  provoke  an  angry  discussion, 
but  I  said  that  I  did  not  mean  to  offend  him. 
"But  certainly  there  are  differences,"  I  said, 
"  between  the  hands  in  the  Hampton  mills  and 
as  many  farmers  in  the  valley  above  and  the 
valley  below.  The  great  difference  is  that  they 
have  to  work  when  the  mill  works.  Their  hours 
of  work  have  to  fit  in  with  the  hours  when  the 
machinery  is  going.  Now  the  farmer  works  fif- 
teen hours  a  day,  or  five  hours  a  day,  or  none. 
In  this  distinction  there  is  a  difference,  and  it  is 
as  well  to  acknowledge  it." 

By  this  time  Spinner  had  cooled  down,  and  he 
said  he  hoped  he  had  not  spoken  too  warmly. 
"But  the  truth  is,"  said  he,  "that  you  have 
stated  precisely  the  distinction,  such  as  it  is, 
between  us  here  and  other  work-people.  These 
young  men  whom  you  see  in  my  room  are  not 
chained  to  this  machinery.  That  one  whom  I 
call  Bob  came  to  me  this  morning  to  say  that  he 


228  now    TllKV    LIVED    IX    HAMPTON. 

had  engaged  for  the  next  summer  with  the  peo- 
ple at  Mount  Pleasant.  He  is  to  be  at  the  head 
of  their  livery  stable  there.  The  man  who 
brought  me  the  patterns  just  now  has  been  out 
in  Dakota  with  his  brother,  who  has  a  farm 
there.  He  will  go  again,  one  of  these  days,  — 
is,  indeed,  of  rather  a  restless  turn,  —  but  I  sup- 
pose that  is  good  for  him.  And  the  girls  and 
women  come  and  go  in  the  same  fashion. 

"  Now,  to  answer  your  question,  as  perhaps  I 
should  have  done  before,  such  people,  living  in 
the  same  life  as  the  rest  of  the  world,  need  no 
special  system  for  their  old  age,  or  their  sick- 
ness, or  'other  infirmity.'  What  is  good  for 
farmers  or  lawyers  or  editors  or  doctors  is  good 
for  them.  But  they  need  nothing  more,  and  they 
take  nothing  up.  When  you  come  to  speak  of 
Lowell,  or  Philadelphia,  or  Chicago,  you  speak 
of  something  different  from  Hampton.  But 
you  need  higher  organization  of  your  charities 
there,  not  because  you  are  dealing  with  work- 
men, but  because  you  are  dealing  with  large 
cities.  As  to  large  cities  —  well,  I  am  very 
much  of   Jefferson's  notion." 

"  What  was  that  ? "  I  asked. 

"  Oh,  he  said  large  cities  are  large  sores.  I 
think  Sallust  thought  so.  To  go  back.  It  is 
true,  and  I  am  rather  proud  to  say  it,  that  the 
English  W'Orkingmen,  and  not  the  French  theo- 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK.  229 

rists,  developed  and  worked  out  all  the  detail  of 
the  magnificent  Friendly  Societies,  which,  under 
one  name  or  another,  cover  the  whole  land,  and 
make  what  is  technically  called  '  charity '  the 
less  necessary.  Providence,  prudence,  is  a  great 
deal  better  than  charity.  And  if  a  '  Forester,' 
or  a  '  Druid,'  or  an  '  Odd  Fellow  '  has  had  at 
once  the  Christian  kindness  and  the  Saxon  good 
sense  to  pay  regularly  his  monthly  dues  to  the 
lodge,  or  camp,  or  chapter  of  the  order  to  which 
he  belongs,  why,  he  has  saved  society  no  end  of 
trouble  in  bothering  about  his  widow  and  his 
orphans.  I  am  not  a  Freemason.  But  I  am 
disposed  to  think  that  their  arrangements  for 
mutual  help,  or  what  is  really  a  sickness  and 
death  insurance,  have  been  very  much  enlarged 
in  the  last  half-century.  However  that  is,  I  am 
sure  that  these  other  orders,  Rechabites,  Knights 
of  Honor,  Odd  Fellows,  Druids,  Foresters,  Sons 
of  Temperance,  and  the  rest,  give  to  everybody 
opportunities  for  providing  for  an  evil  day,  so 
general  and  so  careful  that  we  have  no  need  of 
establishing  separate  plans  of  our  own,  in  as 
small  a  place  as  Hampton. 

•'  It  all  comes  to  mutual  insurance.  In  fact, 
as  you  know,  some  of  the  associations  simply 
take  the  name  of  Mutual  Insurance  Companies. 
Some  of  them,  indeed,  do  not  collect  their  dues 
until  the  exact  occasion  comes  when  the  money 


230  HOW    TIIEV    LIVED    IX    HAMPTON. 

is  needed.  In  a  small  club  of  a  thousand  mem- 
bers you  will  receive  a  note  which  says  that  our 
brother,  Mr.  Jones,  fell  from  a  roof  yesterday, 
or  died  with  typhoid,  or  was  drowned  at  sea  last 
week,  and  that  the  secretary  knows  you  will  be 
glad  to  pay  two  dollars,  as  you  are  bound  to  do, 
by  the  way,  for  the  fund  now  due  to  his  widow. 
Well,  there  is  a  certain  advantage  in  that  plan. 
You  see,  and  cannot  help  seeing,  how  good  a 
thing  you  are  engaged  in.  You  are  sorry  for 
the  widow ;  you  are  glad  you  did  not  fall  from 
the  roof  yourself.  And  you  pay  your  two  dol- 
lars with  a  sort  of  personal  interest  that  a  man 
does  not  always  feel  in  paying  a  money  assess- 
ment. But,  of  course,  the  principle  is  the  same. 
You  are  trained  to  laying  up  something  for  an 
evil  day  ;  and,  —  here  is  the  important  thing,  — 
you  are  trained  to  remember  that  no  misfortune 
comes  to  you  that  is  not  'common  to  man,'  as 
the  Bible  says.  You  are  trained  to  do  your 
part,  as  a  Christian  man,  for  all  the  others. 

"  For,  no  matter  what  name  the  thing  takes, 
all  this  mutual  provision  and  care  is  a  part  of 
the  Christian  religion.  It  is  all  part  of  'The 
Way.'  It  was  set  on  foot  by  Jesus  Christ,  as 
distinctly  as  if  He  had  dictated  the  constitution 
of  a  company  to  St.  Peter.  If  we  were  each 
and  all  so  many  separate,  selfish  bodies,  we 
should  not  do  such  things.     It  is  because  we 


THE    SAVINGS    BANK.  23 1 

are  children  of  God,  whom  Christ  died  to  save, 
that  we  do  such  things,  and  encourage  other 
people  to  do  them.  Whether  a  lodge  meeting 
opens  with  prayer  or  not,  all  the  same  it  was 
founded  the  day  Jesus  Christ  was  born,  and  it 
never  would  exist  were  it  not  for  His  Gospel." 


CHAPTER   XIV. 


WORK    AND    LABOR. 


I  WAS  to  make  a  little  speech  at  a  picnic  of 
a  few  of  the  hands  one  afternoon,  and  I 
asked  Mr.  Spinner's  advice  as  to  what  I  should 
say. 

"  Pray  speak  to  them  as  you  would  speak  to 
anybody  else,"  he  said,  reverting  to  his  old  sen- 
sitive feeling  of  dislike  for  anything  which,  in 
our  hard-working  country,  made  workmen  into  a 
"class."  "But  if  you  must  make  distinctions, 
do  not  call  us  'laborers,'  and  do  not  talk  of  the 
'dignity  of  labor.'" 

"Why  not.'"  said  I,  dully  enough.  "Is  not 
all  that  you  do  intended  to  give  dignity  to  labor, 
and  are  you  not  all  laborers  .''  " 

"  No,"  said  Spinner,  with  an  nitentional  ex- 
pression of  indignation.  "  I  am  afraid  that 
there  are  one  or  two  laboring  men  about,  dig- 
ging post-holes,  or  at  work  in  the  bottom  of  the 
flume,  but  they  are  all  trying  to  rise  from  the 
grade  of  laborers  to  the  grade  of  workmen. 
Labor  is  always  wearing,  fatiguing,  repulsive, 
and  every  man  who  is  a  man  is  always  trying  to 


WORK    AND    LABOR.  233 

replace  it  by  some  less  wearing,  less  repulsive, 
and  less  fatiguing  process.  That  is  to  say,  the 
whole  of  what  you  call  civilization  consists  in 
substituting  Work,  which  is  the  conquest  of  mat- 
ter by  spirit,  for  Labor,  in  which  a  man  throws 
his  own  dead  weight  or  muscle  against  the  dead 
weight  of  the  clod  he  is  handling." 

Here  was  a  bit  of  philology  which  interested 
me,  and  I  made  Spinner  follow  it  out.  He  said 
that  it  had  been  an  immense  satisfaction  to  him, 
when  the  late  Dr.  Bethune  of  Brooklyn  called  his 
attention  to  the  radical  distinction  between  the 
two  words.  He  told  me  that  I  should  find  the 
distinction  carefully  carried  out  in  the  English 
Bible.  He  said  that  God  is  always  spoken  of  as 
working,  never  as  laboring.  He  said  that  when 
the  righteous  die,  they  cease  from  their  labors, 
but  their  works  follow  them,  —  for  that  angels 
and  archangels  are  fellow-workers  with  God 
Himself.  Labors,  he  said,  are  spoken  of  in  the 
correct  English  of  the  Bible  as  we  speak  of 
toils,  or  drudgery,  with  persecutions  and  ship- 
wrecks, and  other  finite  necessities  of  a  finite 
world.  But  Paul  and  the  other  saints  are  al- 
ways hoping  to  be  released  from  their  labors, 
while  they,  also,  like  angels  and  archangels,  are 
glad  to  be  fellow-workmen  with  God.  He  even 
said  that  the  one  place  where  Paul  called  him- 
self a  fellow-laborer  with  God,  in  our  Bible,  was 


234  ''OW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

a  slip  of  the  translators,  and  that  it  had  been 
corrected  in  the  revised  version. 

I  asked  him  if  Dr.  Bethune  had  ever  printed 
his  study  of  this  subject.  He  said  he  had  never 
seen  his  address  in  print.  But  he  gave  me  an 
address  of  his  own,  which  I  am  glad  to  copy  here. 
For  Spinner's  mock  rage  was  really  sublime, 
when  he  ridiculed  the  stump  orators  who  came 
up  to  political  meetings  in  October  about  the 
"  dignity  of  labor."  "  Probably  not  one  of  them 
ever  did  an  honest  day's  work  in  his  life,"  Spin- 
ner said,  grimly.  "  If  he  had,  he  would  talk 
about  the  dignity  of  work,  and  leave  labor  where 
it  belongs."  I  chaffed  Spinner  a  little,  for  I 
told  him  he  was  himself  making  the  classifica- 
tion against  which  he  warned  me,  —  only  he  was 
making  a  class  of  laborers. 

"  I  make  a  class  of  laborers ! "  he  cried ; 
"  Heaven  forbid.  No,  I  am  doing  all  I  can  to 
reduce  the  amount  of  necessary  labor,  and  to  sub- 
stitute work  for  it,  —  as  when  the  steam  derrick 
lifts  those  stones,  which  ten  years  ago  would 
have  been  lifted  by  the  labor  of  men."  And  on 
this  I  went  off  to  prepare  myself  for  the  picnic 
by  reading  the  lecture. 

It  had  been  prepared  for  one  of  their  own  ly- 
ceum  courses.  But  I  saw  by  the  notes  on  the 
cover  that  he  had  delivered  it  in  a  good  many 
of  the  neighboring  towns ;  and  when  I  read  it, 


WORK    AND    LABOR.  235 

I  was  glad  that  it  had  been  favorably  received. 
For,  as  the  reader  will  see,  the  doctrine  of  the 
lecture  went  a  good  deal  beyond  a  mere  specula- 
tion on  the  use  of  English  words,  and  involved 
a  good  many  of  the  principles  on  which  the 
social  order  of  our  modern  life  depends. 

After  an  introduction  half  in  joke,  in  which 
he  described,  with  a  good  deal  of  humor,  the 
political  shyster,  who  appears  once  a  year,  pos- 
ing as  the  "friend  of  labor,"  Spinner  went  into 
the  etymology  of  the  words  "  labor  "  and  "  work." 
He  cited  from  Shakespeare  and  Milton  expres- 
sions which  showed  their  use  of  them. 

That  is,  he  contrasted 

"Painful  labors  both  by  sea  and  land" 
against 

"Come,  let  us  to  our  holy  work  again." 

And  he  took  from  Milton, 

"  Body  shall  up  to  spirit  work," 
and, 

"  Our  better  part  remains  to  work  in  close  design," 

which  he  contrasted  against  the  phrase, 

"  Those  afflictions  you  now  labor  under." 

"  But  this  classical  use  of  language,  if  I  may 
so  call  it,  is  not  yet  old-fashioned.  Go  out  on 
the  platform  of  a  railroad  station,  — go  forward 
and  speak   to   the   engineer.      'We  are   not  on 


236  HOW    TllKV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

time,  Mr.  Stevenson.  What's  the  matter.?'  'I 
don't  just  know,  sir,  but  she  kil)ors  badly  on  the 
up-g'rade.'  But  suppose  it  is  the  other  way,  and 
you  say  to  your  Mr.  Stevenson,  '  You're  run- 
ning on  time  to-night.'  'Ah,  yes,'  he  says, 
with  a  broad  grin  ;  'she  works  well'  That  man 
knows  the  difference  between  'labor,'  which 
always  wears  out,  —  that  is  what  the  word  means 
in  Latin,  —  and  'work,'  which  never  hurt  any- 
body or  anything,  when  it  was  used  in  the 
proper  way  and  the  proper  proportion.  They 
would  tell  you  the  same  thing  when  the  Puritan 
ran  her  race  against  the  Galatea.  If  the  sailing- 
master  were  satisfied,  he  would  nod  his  head, 
and  he  would  say,  '  Does  she  not  work  well .'' ' 
And  if  he  were  dissatisfied, — why,  if  the  man 
did  not  swear,  it  would  be  well,  but  he  would  be 
sure  to  say  that  she  'labored'  with  every  wave 
of  the  sea. 

"  The  Digger  Indian,  so  long  as  he  digs  with 
his  hands,  is  a  fit  type  of  the  laborer.  Robinson 
Crusoe,  —  when  he  was  flung  upon  the  beach, 
without  any  tools,  to  work  with  his  bare  hands 
and  feet,  —  he  was  a  laborer.  He  had  to  bend 
down  the  trees  to  make  his  wigwam.  If  he  was 
heavy  enough,  —  if  they  broke  where  he  wanted, 
or  bent  as  he  chose,  —  happy  for  him,  —  he  was 
a  successful  laborer.  But  it  was  his  dead  weight, 
and  the  dead  pull  of  his  muscles,  by  which  he 


WORK    AND    LABOR.  237 

succeeded.  Robinson  Crusoe,  when  he  put  a 
lever  under  a  stone,  so  that  with  half  the  labor 
he  could  do  the  same  work,  became  a  workman. 
Why,  as  lately  as  when  the  dam  was  built  here, 
which  holds  back  the  water  for  our  mills,  the 
drilling  of  the  holes  in  the  granite  for  the  split- 
ting of  the  stone  was  all  so  much  dead  labor. 
Ten  or  twelve  good  fellows  —  how  I  pity  them, 
and  so  do  you  —  stood  on  the  edge  of  the  quarry 
there,  with  ten  or  twelve  heavy  drills,  and  all 
day  long  had  to  thump,  thump,  thump,  as  they 
made  the  long  holes  into  the  hard  stone  for  the 
blast  of  the  evening.  Did  my  friend,  the  Hon- 
orable Slippery  Gabbletongue,  go  up  and  tell 
them  that  labor  was  honorable  ?  Did  he  tell  them 
so  in  a  practical  way,  by  taking  any  man's  drill 
from  him,  and  sending  him  off  to  the  next  pri- 
mary meeting,  while  he  drilled  ?  Not  he.  Mr. 
Gabbletongue  was  in  the  drummer's  room,  up  at 
the  hotel,  preparing  his  notes  on  the  '  toil-worn 
craftsman.'  The  ten  or  twelve  good  fellows 
thumped  away  there,  till  one  fine  day,  a  real  re- 
former, a  man  who  knew  the  difference  between 
labor  and  work,  looked  in  upon  them.  And  he 
set  up  —  you  have  seen  it  —  a  little  portable 
boiler  and  engine  there.  As  long  as  he  wanted, 
it  drove,  not  ten  drills,  but  thirty.  And  one  or 
two  good  fellows  tended  the  drills,  in  careful  and 
delicate  work,  while  the  little  spitting  engine 


23S  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

did  all  the  labor.  And  your  friend,  Mr.  Willing, 
tended  the  gauges  and  the  escape-valve,  and  lay 
in  the  shade  and  read  Henry  George,  or  wrote 
a  love-letter.  He  and  his  two  workmen  did 
three  times  what  was  done  before.  And  this 
was  because  they  substituted  a  little  intelligent 
work  for  a  great  deal  of  unintelligent  labor. 

"Simply,  my  friends,  the  advance  which  the 
world  has  made  in  its  commerce,  its  manufac- 
ture, and  all  its  social  order,  since  the  year  1775, 
—  when  Watt  and  Bolton  spoke  the  word  and 
freed  the  people,  —  has  been  in  this  line  of  the 
diminution  of  labor,  while  true  work  is  substi- 
tuted in  its  place.  I  rode  into  the  woods,  fifty 
miles  up  the  river,  last  fall.  What  did  I  find 
there  .■*  I  found  a  settler  clearing  out  his  farm, 
in  a  new  precinct.  Was  he  swinging  the  axe, 
as  the  '  grand  old  man '  does  when  he  wants  to 
take  exercise  .''  He  was  reading  a  newspaper. 
He  had  one  of  Whittier  and  Woodruff's  little 
horse-powers  by  the  road,  —  he  had  his  old  gray 
nag  at  work  in  it ;  his  boy  Tom  was  training  a 
circular  saw  upon  the  log  in  question ;  and  in  a 
tenth  part  of  the  time  which  the  laboring  man 
would  have  needed  with  his  axe,  the  old  gray 
had  done  the  business.  Labor  was  relegated  to 
the  brutes, — where  in  the  end  it  belongs, — 
and  intelligent  work  was  there  in  its  place. 

"But  it  is  not  brutes  alone,  or  chiefly,  who 


WORK    AND    LABOR,  239 

are  thus  drawn  into  the  service  of  man  to  take 
his  labors  for  him.  There  are  these  giants 
whom  man  has  created,  —  whom  he  commands, 
—  as  Aladdin  commanded  his  slaves.  It  is  a 
slavery,  thank  God,  without  a  lash  or  a  scar. 
Watt  and  Bolton  first,  and  since  them  more 
inventors  than  can  be  named,  coming  down  to 
our  own  Corliss  and  so  many  of  our  American 
inventors,  have  been  calling  into  being  these 
giants,  whose  bones  are  of  wood  and  iron  and 
brass  and  steel,  and  bidding  them  do  our  bid- 
ding. And  here  at  the  Falls,  you  have,  in  the 
same  way,  with  our  turbines  and  our  flume, 
compelled  the  tireless  waterfall  to  take  our 
labor,  while  we  work.  The  workmen  I  am 
speaking  to  know  what  progress  has  been  made 
in  the  last  generation  in  this  direction.  But  all 
of  you  may  not  know  that  in  the  manufacture 
of  cotton  cloth,  for  instance,  thirty  hands  will 
now  do  the  work  which  required  a  hundred 
hands  only  thirty  years  ago.  I  say,  do  the 
work.  In  my  strict  sense  of  the  word,  not  one 
of  those  hands  is  a  laborer.  He  is  a  skilled 
workman;  and  just  as  the  cutler  of  to-day  does 
not  drive  his  own  stone,  the  spinner  of  to-day 
does  not  twist  his  own  thread,  nor  the  weaver 
drive  his  own  shuttle.  The  labor  is  done  for 
him  by  the  waterfall  or  by  the  piston. 

"  And  what  has  become  of  the  seventy  men 


240  now    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

and  women  set  free  from  the  work  of  spinning 
the  thread  or  weaving  the  web  ?  Here  is  the 
most  interesting  result  of  all.  What  is  the  new 
variety  of  industry,  —  what  is  the  wide  range  of 
art  and  manufacture,  but  the  immediate  product 
of  the  hands  and  the  heads  of  these  men  and 
women  who  have  new  fields  of  adventure  to 
try,  who  profit  by  the  new  inventions,  and  find 
new  work,  of  grades  more  and  more  interesting, 
open  before  them .-'  You  have  the  marvels  of 
electricity.  You  have  callings  created  by  them. 
You  have  all  the  wonderful  fertility  of  fine  art. 
Your  homes  are  bright  with  pictures  and  books, 
cheaper  than  ever  and  better  than  ever.  Trav- 
elling becomes  a  luxury ;  and  it  is  the  luxury  of 
the  poor,  where  it  was  the  necessity  of  the  rich. 
Gradually  but  certainly  the  day's  work  shortens  ; 
yet  the  world's  product  enlarges.  Prices  stead- 
ily fall.  Comfort  steadily  increases.  And  all 
this  is  exactly  in  proportion  as,  by  an  intelligent 
invention,  we  substitute  work  for  labor." 

At  this  point  a  double  black  line  was  drawn 
across  Spinner's  manuscript,  and  the  next  page 
was  left  blank.  It  was  clear  enough  that  a 
pause  was  made  here  in  delivery,  —  perhaps 
what  the  old  lecturers  called  an  "intermission." 
The  address  then  went  on  in  a  somewhat  differ- 
ent vein. 

"  I  hope  no  man    or  woman    hears    me  who 


WORK    AND    LABOR.  24 1 

thinks  the  distinction  I  have  drawn  is  a  mere 
matter  of  the  dictionary-makers  or  word-spKt- 
ters.  I  liate  them  and  their  deeds.  I  dare  not 
try  to  say  how  much  evil  they  have  done  to  this 
world,  and  especially  to  industry  —  honest  indus- 
try —  and  to  work  —  honest  work.  The  curse 
—  may  I  say  it .''  —  of  the  Son  of  God  is  upon 
so  many  of  them,  where,  in  that  terrible  de- 
scription of  His,  in  the  shortest  words  of  our 
language.  He  speaks  of  those  who  'say  and  do 
not.'  I  would  be  dumb  rather  than  come  here 
to  entertain  you  with  a  mere  discussion  of 
words. 

"  No ;  I  have  dwelt  on  the  difference  between 
the  two  words  because  I  want  to  show  the  dif- 
ference between  two  things.  There  are  coun- 
tries and  there  are  times  in  which  there  is  a 
great  deal  of  labor  and  very  little  work.  There 
are  barbarous  countries  and  barbarous  times. 
There  are  other  countries  and  other  times  where 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  work  and  very  little 
labor.  Such,  thank  God,  is  our  country  and 
this  time ;  and  we  call  it  a  civilized  country  and 
a  civilized  age  simply  because  there  is  much 
work  and  little  labor.  But,  my  friends,  we  do 
not  know  —  we  do  not  begin  to  know  —  what 
we  mean  by  that  great  word  'civilization.'  If 
our  children  know,  —  and  I  hope  they  will,  —  it 
will  be  because  we  are  faithful  to  our  part   in 


242  HOW    TIli:V    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

substituting  work  for  labor.  We  must  do  our 
part  to  have  the  drudgery  done  by  beasts,  by 
water,  by  steam,  by  electricity,  and  by  any  new 
power  which  the  genius  of  man,  guided  by  the 
Spirit  of  God,  can  tame.  To  make  more  places 
for  workmen,  and  to  lift  more  laboring  men  into 
these  places, — this  is  our  duty. 

"  We  respect  labor.  Yes  ;  v/e  respect  any- 
thing that  is  honest.  But  all  the  encourage- 
ment we  give  to  labor  shall  be  the  encourage- 
ment a  man  gives  to  a  tired  boy  on  his  long 
walk.  The  walk  shall  soon  be  over,  and  the 
rest  from  it  shall  be  won. 

"  It  is  our  business,  first  of  all,  to  encourage 
the  laboring  man,  by  opening  to  him  every  pos- 
sible line  of  promotion,  that  he  may  become  a 
workman.  Help  him  to  go  to  the  evening 
school.  Help  him  with  his  books.  Encourage 
his  children  in  the  same  way.  Do  not  ask  him 
nor  expect  him  to  remain  a  drudge  or  a  laborer 
long ;  but  show  him  that,  in  a  country  like  ours, 
the  lines  of  promotion  are  always  open.  These 
few  years  of  labor  are  like  the  voyage  of  the 
sea-sick  passenger,  every  day  of  which  brings 
him  nearer  to  the  promised  land. 

"  If  you  will  tell  him  the  truth,  you  can  make 
him  see  this.  We  have  very  accurate  knowl- 
edge of  the  proportion  of  laborers  to  workmen 
in- Northern  America.     The  statistics  of  Massa- 


WORK    AND    LABOR.  24J 

chusetts  are  precise.  They  show  us  that  of 
the  working  force  of  that  industrious  common- 
wealth only  nine  per  cent  are  '  unskilled  la- 
borers.' The  other  ninety-one  per  cent  are 
workmen.  They  are  conquering  matter,  not  by 
the  matter  in  their  bones  and  blood,  but  by  the 
immortal  Spirit  which  comes  from  God.  Only 
one-eleventh  of  the  force  of  Massachusetts  are 
laboring  men  and  women.  Now,  suppose  Mas- 
sachusetts was  an  old-fashioned  Japan.  Suppose 
there  was  a  wall  of  fire  around  her,  and  no  one 
could  come  in.  Suppose  she  said  she  would 
compel  her  young  men,  as  they  started  in  life, 
to  do  this  heavy  work,  —  to  be  her  drudges  and 
laborers  ;  and  that,  when  each  had  done  it,  she 
would  promote  them  to  be  workmen, — fellow- 
workers  with  God  Almighty  !  They  would  only 
have  to  toil  in  that  drudgery  four  little  years  or 
less.  They  would  be  for  that  time  like  the  con- 
scripts in  a  German  army.  In  their  young  life 
they  would  so  serve  the  commonwealth  that  as 
men  and  women  they  could  rise  to  higher  ser- 
vice as  workmen  and  workwomen,  —  yes,  as  the 
directors  of  the  drudges.  Any  man  would  say 
that  he  would  buy  that  emancipation  by  those 
four  years  of  drudgery,  if  that  was  the  only 
opening  to  it. 

"  Now   these    figures  for  Massachusetts   arc 
undoubtedly  the   figures  for  all    the    industrial 


244         J'^'^\'  Tin:v  i,i\'ed  in  hampton. 

states  of  America.  You  have,  then,  a  right  to 
say  to  that  good  fellow  from  Italy  or  from  Hun- 
gary who  digs  a  ditch  for  you  to-day,  *  Look 
aloft,  my  friend  ;  look  forward  cheerfully.  At 
the  most  we  only  need  you  a  few  years  in  this 
toil.  And  our  schools  are  open,  our  library  is 
open,  our  shops  are  open,  that  you  may  leave 
this  toil  and  rise  higher.'  If  the  man  turns  you 
off,  —  if  he  had  rather  drink  bad  beer  and  bad 
whiskey  all  his  life,  and  all  his  life  be  a  beast, 
a  drudge,  and  a  toilsman,  —  that  is  his  affair. 
But  be  sure  you  do  your  part  to  lift  him  higher. 
Make  him  temperate.  Teach  him  to  read. 
Teach  him  to  write.  Give  him  a  chance  to 
draw.  Give  him  a  chance  to  use  his  hands. 
Perhaps  he  can  carve ;  perhaps  he  can  paint. 
Show  him  that  he  has  a  mind.  Show  him  this 
by  showing  him  that  he  has  a  soul.  Let  his 
soul  begin  to  use  his  mind  and  his  body,  and 
you  have  made  him  free  indeed. 

"  I  spoke  bitterly  of  those  people  who  make 
me  sick.  They  are  the  people  who  talk  all  day, 
when  they  know  nothing,  and  have  nothing  to 
tell  me.  They  are  like  the  Philadelphia  print- 
ing-presses in  the  Revolution,  that  clattered  all 
day  and  all  night,  and  printed  nothing  but  sheets 
of  Continental  money,  of  which  every  word  was 
a  visible  lie.  When  a  man  like  that  looks  into 
my  weaving-room,  and  sees  an  intelligent  young 


WORK    AND    LABOR.  245 

lady  there  overlooking  four  looms  perhaps,  gently 
releasing  a  broken  thread,  quietly  soothing  a 
squeaking  pivot,  —  when  one  of  these  men  calls 
her  afterward  a  person  who  works  with  her 
hands,  and  in  condescending  contrast  speaks  of 
himself  as  a  person  who  works  with  his  brain, 
I  want  to  knock  the  man  down.  Brain,  indeed  ! 
Hand,  indeed !  Her  work  is  intellectual  work 
far  more  subtle  than  his.  Let  them  be  judged 
by  their  fruits.  At  the  end  of  a  year  she  shows 
so  many  bales  of  cloth,  or,  if  you  please,  so 
many  men  '  clothed  in  their  right  mind,'  because 
she  gave  her  intelligence  to  clothing  men.  And 
he  shows  —  a  ream  of  paper  covered  with  an 
infinite  ocean  of  nothing. 

"  But  I  do  not  stop  with  our  duty  to  educate 
the  laborer  into  a  workman.  Let  us  steadily, 
in  all  lines  of  our  duty,  remember  that  there 
should  be  no  fixed  and  permanent  class  of 
laborers.  Let  us  arrange  the  laws,  the  customs, 
and  habits,  as  we  arrange  the  education,  of  the 
community,  so  that  labor  may  be  regarded  as 
simply  a  necessary  preliminary  to  good  work  ; 
as  we  inoculate  a  child,  though  we  make  him 
sick  for  a  week,  in  order  that  from  one  disease 
he  may  be  exempt  forever.  To  do  this,  we 
must  highly  disregard  much  that  we  find  written 
in  the  older  books,  when  the  laboring  men  made 
three-quarters  of  a  community,  while  now  they 


246  now    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

make  only  one-eleventh,  as  I  have  shown  you ; 
and  we  must  determine  so  to  improve  industry 
and  invention  that  ni  twenty  years  that  propor- 
tion shall  be  reduced  still  farther,  and  there 
shall  be  only  five  drudges,  while  there  are  nine- 
ty-five men  and  women  who  have  stepped  for- 
ward in  man's  great  God-given  duty  of  subduing 
the  world.  Laws,  customs,  language,  education, 
fashions,  —  all  must  contribute  to  this  advance 
and  reform. 

"  My  contribution  to  it  to-night,  if  I  have  in 
the  least  succeeded,  has  been  made  in  showing 
you  the  object  at  which  we  are  aiming.  And 
we  are  to  remember  that  mere  drudgery  —  I  had 
almost  said,  from  its  nature  —  degrades  the 
drudge,  and  tends  to  make  him  the  mere  beast 
which  he  is  called.  In  the  mere  infancy  of 
civilization,  the  kings  of  Europe  punished  men 
by  making  of  them  galley-slaves.  The  severest 
punishment  was  to  make  a  man  completely  a 
drudge.  All  day  long,  under  the  lash  perhaps, 
he  was  to  pull  at  that  heavy  oar.  Nay,  to  dis- 
grace him  the  more,  he  was  even  made  to  pull 
when  his  toil  was  wholly  wasted,  —  when  the 
galley  was  anchored  at  the  pier.  The  treadmill, 
which  I  believe  we  never  had  in  America,  but 
which  I  have  myself  seen  in  England,  was  in 
practice  the  same  thing.  It  merely  took  the 
dead  weight  of   the    man.     He  walked   up   on 


WORK    AND    LABOR.  24/ 

that  moving  stairway,  —  always  stepping  up  and 
never  ascending.  Why  have  these  punishments 
been  abandoned,  except  in  extreme  cases  .''  Why 
would  it  be  well  to  abandon  them  forever  ? 
Simply  because  they  ruined  the  man.  You 
treated  the  man  as  if  he  were  a  beast,  and,  by 
an  infinite  law  he  became  a  beast.  The  quality 
of  manhood  is  to  look  up,  and  to  look  forward. 
You  took  the  quality  away  when  you  repressed 
it,  —  when  you  failed  to  use  it.  And  just  what 
happened  to  those  poor  galley-slaves  and  tread- 
mill men  is  what  is  likely  to  happen  to  any  man 
whom  I  compel  to  a  life  of  mere  brute  toil, 
unless  you  enlarge  him  by  that  noblest  word, 
'Friend,  go  up  higher.' 

"  You  may  ask  any  temperance  man,  who  is 
a  real  workman  in  that  great  cause,  whether 
drudgery  is  not  bad  for  a  man's  temperance. 
Ask  the  Red  Ribbon  men  where  danger  comes. 
They  will  tell  you  that  it  comes  when  a  man's 
physical  frame  is  exhausted  by  his  day's  toil, 
and  when  he  has  no  ambition  to  supply  a  higher 
stimulus  than  that  of  alcohol.  Tired  to  death, 
with  every  muscle  aching,  with  no  chance  of  a 
to-morrow  any  higher  than  to-day,  or  that  next 
year  will  be  brighter  than  this  year,  the  poor 
creature  goes  into  the  liquor  shop  as  he  leaves 
his  drudgery.  For  my  part,  I  do  not  wonder. 
I  can  hardly  say  I  blame  him.     I  can  say  I  pity 


248  now    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

him.  And  you  know  what  follows.  He  forgets 
his  fatigue,  he  forgets  that  he  is  worn  out. 
There  has  been  one  cheerful  hour  after  a  day 
of  wretched  toil,  — and  so,  alas  !  he  comes  again 
and  again,  and  at  last  you  hear  that  the  devil 
who  tempted  him  in  has  kicked  the  poor  brute 
out,  because  he  has  nothing  to  pay  to  his 
tempter.  You  began  by  calling  him  '  poor  man,' 
and  then  you  said  'poor  creature,'  and  then  you 
said  *  poor  brute.'  That  is,  you  condemned 
him  to  the  life  of  a  brute,  and  to  a  brute's  life 
of  appetite  it  reduced  him. 

"  But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  I  wanted  to  en- 
courage and  improve  a  gang  of  laboring  men, 
if  I  found  the  liquor-dealers  had  got  hold  of 
them,  and  were  leading  them  you  know  where,  I 
would  first  of  all  try  to  make  them  see  that  in 
the  habit  of  drink  they  are  selling  themselves  — 
yes,  and  the  children  they  love  better  than  them- 
selves —  to  perpetual  slavery.  I  should  show 
them  that  in  a  country  like  this,  with  open 
lines  of  promotion,  no  man  is  kept  digging  in 
the  mud  unless  he  keeps  himself  there.  I 
should  show  them  that  in  that  slavery  they 
are  open  to  the  competition  of  the  heaviest 
brute  and  the  strongest,  who  is  too  dull  to  do 
better,  —  by  which  I  mean,  to  him,  easier.  I 
should  show  them  that  every  starving  nation  in 
Europe,  in  Asia,  or  in  Africa,  sent  over  ship- 


WORK    AND    LABOR.  249 

loads  of  competitors  to  lower  their  wages  for 
them.  I  should  show  them  that  while  they 
were  drinking-men  they  would  never  rise  a 
hand's  breadth  above  this  position  of  drudg- 
ery ;  and  the  reason  I  would  urge  to  compel 
them  to  take  the  pledge  and  to  keep  it  would 
be  that  thus  they  began  their  upward  step,  with 
some  purpose  and  some  hope.  I  should  show 
them  what  we  Christians  mean  when  we  speak 
of  '  The  glorious  liberty  of  the  sons  of  God.' 

"  I  am  no  preacher,  friends,  as  you  know.  I 
do  not  pretend  to  bring  you  a  sermon.  But  I 
dare  not  stop  till  I  have  said  that  you  will  find 
every  word  I  have  said  better  said  in  the  four 
gospels,  and  in  the  letters  of  that  master-work- 
man, as  I  have  heard  Mr.  Sherlock  call  him,  — 
that  master-workman  in  the  craft  of  tent-mak- 
ing, Paul  of  Tarsus.  That  men  may  come  into 
the  glorious  liberty  of  the  sons  of  God,  the 
Saviour  of  men  begs  them  to  come  up  higher. 
That  they  may  do  so,  St.  Paul  begs  them  to 
forget  the  things  that  are  behind,  and  to  reach 
forth  to  the  things  that  are  before.  To  do  this 
they  need,  first  of  all,  for  the  glorious  renewal 
of  the  new  birth,  to  master  the  body,  to  master 
the  mind,  by  the  sway  of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  and 
this  means  that  they  will,  step  by  step  and  day  by 
day,  mount  from  that  drudgery  in  which  brute 
force  toils  with  things,  up  into  that  higher  life  in 
which  the  children  of  God  subdue  the  world." 


CHAPTER   XV. 


COMMUNISM, 


THEY  had  an  old  Scotchman  in  the  count- 
ing-room at  Hampton,  named  Dugdale. 
He  said  he  knew  nothing  about  their  business, 
for  that  he  was  a  cotton-bug.  But,  in  truth,  he 
had  a  Scotchman's  habit  of  turning  his  hand  to 
many  things  ;  he  had  seen  many  more  countries 
than  Ulysses  ever  saw,  and  many  more  men ; 
and,  having  kept  his  eyes  open,  he  had  learned 
something  from  every  man  and  every  country. 

He  was  so  old  now  that  he  did  not  like  work 
at  the  loom,  and  had  even  given  up  the  superin- 
tendence of  one  of  the  weaving-rooms,  where  he 
had  long  been  a  master.  And  now  he  was  the 
chief  book-keeper  of  the  concern. 

I  was  interested  to  find  that  he  knew  per- 
sonally Robert  Owen,  whose  experiments  at 
New  Lanark,  in  social  order,  attracted  so  much 
attention  in  their  time,  and  were  supposed  by 
so  many  intelligent  people  to  carry  with  them 
the  secret  of  the  industries  of  the  future,  —  to 
exhibit,  indeed,  the  "  Kingdom  of  Heaven  "  in 
the  form  which  it  was  to  take  on  earth. 


COMMUNISM.  251 

The  Emperor  Alexander  of  Russia  visited 
New  Lanark ;  and  Robert  Owen  went  to  Elba 
to  persuade  the  exiled  Napoleon  that  here  was 
the  secret  of  the  future. 

Dugdale  had  never  worked  in  his  mills.  He 
was  not  old  enough.  But  as  a  baby  he  had  been 
attended  to  in  the  "' Eccaleobion,"  which  Robert 
Owen  provided  for  the  sustenance  of  all,  babies 
after  they  were  well  hatched.  And  in  later  life 
he  had  made  a  pilgrimage  to  New  Lanark  to 
see  the  wrecks  of  that  incipient  "  City  of  God," 
which  had  not  life  enough  to  live.  Very  sad  it 
was,  he  said,  to  find  astronomical  drawings  of 
real  value,  which  had  been  prepared  for  popular 
lectures,  lying  under  the  foot  of  man,  half-buried 
by  the  plaster  which  had  fallen  from  the  ceiling 
of  the  lecture-room. 

Dugdale  told  me  this  story  one  evening,  and 
it  was  a  very  good  text  for  the  consideration  of 
dear  old  Owen's  plans,  from  which  we  branched 
off — or  some  of  the  men  present  did  —  into  talk 
of  Fourier  and  his  Phalanstery,  of  St.  Simon, 
and  of  some  of  the  later  forms  of  what  is  called 
Socialism,  and  of  what  is  called  Communism. 

Dugdale  said  — and  I  think—  that  the  super- 
ficial writers,  particularly  the  writers  for  the 
press,  in  their  ignorance  of  the  subjects  which 
they  pretend  to  consider,  had  clouded  all  discus- 
sions by  mixing  up  Communism  with  a  «,  as  he 


252  HOW    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

said,  with  Communism  with  an  o.  The  old  word 
"  Communism,"  with  its  accent  on  the  first  sylla- 
ble, meant  one  thing.  It  meant  property  in  com- 
mon, as  the  Shakers  of  America  hold  it  to-day, 
or  as  the  Iroquois  Indians  of  New  York  held  it. 
What  he  called  Communism  with  a  u,  is  the 
notion  of  the  violent  French  radicals,  who  want 
to  exaggerate  local  government,  the  government 
of  the  Commune,  or,  as  we  should  say,  of  the 
township.  It  is  a  miserable  misfortune  for  all 
sensible  discussion,  that  the  two  words  happen 
to  be  spelled  with  the  same  letters.  For  they 
mean  two  wholly  different  things.  Yet  you  can 
hardly  find  a  recent  pamphlet  on  the  subject 
which  is  not  obscured  by  a  carelessness  about 
two  things,  which  have  hardly  anything  to  do 
with  each  other. 

Dugdale  had  himself,  in  earlier  life,  tried 
some  of  the  socialistic  and  communistic  experi- 
ments. He  had  even  spent  part  of  one  winter 
with  the  Shakers,  He  had  read  some  of  the 
best-digested  French  plans.  I  found  he  knew 
about  the  Familistere  at  Guise.  And,  indeed, 
he  went  into  the  philosophy  of  the  system  of 
the  Iroquois  as  I  had  never  heard  any  Ameri- 
can do,  even  if  he  were  a  citizen  of  the  state 
of  New  York. 

In  point  of  fact,  he  said,  —  and  I  have  satisfied 
myself  that    the  remark  is  true, — property  in 


COMMUNISM.  253 

common,  if  one  may  use  words  so  contradictor}^ 
was  the  beginning  of  property  in  more  savage 
times,  out  of  which  we  have  gradually  emerged, 
and  we  are  to  look  back  into  semi-barbarism 
for  an  illustration  of  it,  instead  of  looking  for- 
ward into  a  higher  civilization.  If  Mr.  Henry 
George  really  wants  to  see  what  happens,  when 
all  land  is  owned  by  the  state,  let  him  go  to 
the  Cherokee  Reservation,  in  the  Indian  Terri- 
tory, where  land  is  held  so  now.  He  can  see 
how  he  likes  that.  It  is  by  gradually  working 
upward  and  outward  from  this  common  holding 
of  which  every  country  in  the  world  has  illus- 
trations in  its  earlier  history,  that  we  have 
come  out  on  the  system  of  to-day.  In  to-day's 
system  a  great  deal  of  wealth  is  still  held  in 
common.  It  is  "  Res  Publica,"  the  Common 
Wealth.  But  for  certain  things,  men  and 
women  have  preferred  to  have  their  own 
"proper  "-ty. 

Dugdale  said  that  when  Robert  Owen  was 
eighty  years  old,  as  eager  as  ever  in  his  hopes 
for  the  *'  Family  Unions,"  as  he  called  his  vil- 
lages, he  himself  asked  the  old  man  what 
people  would  do  when  the  world  was  all  mathe- 
matically adjusted.  Dugdale  expresses  the  fear 
that  it  would  be  a  very  stupid  world. 

"  Do  !  "  cried  the  old  reformer,  with  a  blaze 
of   lisfht  as  from   heaven   on    his   face.     "  Do  ? 


254  IIOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON, 

Why,  they  will  travel !  Tliink  of  the  joy  of 
travelling,  without  expense,  without  fatigue, 
and  zutt/ioiit  bagi^age.'' 

And  he  explained  that  the  traveller  would 
telegraph  in  advance  that  he  was  coming,  and 
would  find  clean  clothing  laid  out  for  him  in 
his  bed-room,  fitted  to  his  size,  —  five  feet 
seven,  or  six  feet  three,  as  the  case  might  be. 

Dugdale  had  intimated,  in  reply,  that  most 
men  had  a  fancy  for  wearing  their  own  shirts. 

Really,  in  this  anecdote,  the  whole  principle 
was  involved.  On  the  whole,  men  preferred  to 
ozvn  their  oivji  shirts,  their  own  axes,  penknives, 
pens,  paper,  and  so  their  own  houses,  oxen, 
horses  and  barns.  John  likes  to  drive  a 
fiery  trotter,  who  wall  go  on  the  road  at  2.40. 
William  had  rather  drive  a  quiet  family  beast, 
w^ho  will  not  annoy  him  as  they  go  on  the  road, 
but  wall  bring  him  out  safely  six  miles  at  the 
end  of  an  hour.  Because,  on  the  whole,  man- 
kind prefers  private  property  in  certain  things, 
men  have  private  property  in  certain  things. 

But  there  is  other  property,  which  is  Common 
Wealth,  and  the  government  of  the  Common 
Wealth  holds  it  and  administers  it.  Un- 
doubtedly it  is  a  subject  for  discussion  and 
experiment  how  much  of  such  property  there 
shall  be.  Indeed,  it  may  be  wise  for  one  com- 
munity   to    hold    certain    wealth    in    common, 


COMMUNISM.  255 

while  another  community  finds  it  best  to  hold 
it  in  severalty.  The  weakness  of  Mr.  Spencer's 
discussion  of  this  subject,  as  of  many  other  dis- 
cussions from  different  English  radicals,  comes 
on  their  insisting  on  classing  all  property  to- 
gether, and  protesting  against  any  claims  of 
Government.  This  comes  from  the  dread 
which  their  fathers  were  bred  in,  by  the  mal- 
administration of  a  landed  aristocracy. 

But,  on  the  whole,  it  has  proved  advisable 
that  the  nation  shall  own  the  light-houses. 
Next  to  these,  it  has  proved  advisable  that  it 
shall  own  the  high-roads,  that  they  shall  not 
be  owned  by  private  companies.  In  America 
we  are  satisfied  that  the  state  should  own  the 
school-houses.  Whether  it  shall  own  the  higher 
schools, — the  colleges  and  universities, — has 
not  been  decided  in  an  experience.  Some  states, 
as  Michigan  and  Wisconsin,  own  the  buildings 
and  funds  of  their  universities,  and  administer 
them.  In  some  states,  as  in  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut,  they  are  the  property  of  distinct 
corporations.  Most  American  cities  think  it 
best  to  own  their  own  water-works.  The  reser- 
voirs, the  pipes,  and  all  the  apparatus,  are  part 
of  the  wealth  in  common  belonging  to  the 
Commonwealth.  There  seems  to  be  no  princi- 
ple which  should  prevent  the  city  government 
from  owning   the   gas-works   and   gas-pipes,  in 


256  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

the  same  way.  But,  on  the  whole,  the  present 
habit  is  to  leave  this  j)roperty  to  speeial  corpora- 
tions. 

In  the  same  way,  it  would  be  hard  to  define 
any  principle  which  should  prevent  a  state  from 
owning  a  railway,  —  as,  indeed,  many  of  the 
European  states  do,  —  as  most  states  own  the 
ordinary  road-way,  on  which  foot-men,  horses, 
cattle,  and  ordinary  carriages  travel.  Whoever 
will  take  the  pains,  in  his  own  neighborhood, 
to  calculate  how  much  money  has  been  spent 
by  the  public  upon  roads,  court-houses,  school- 
houses,  and  other  public  buildings,  water-works, 
street-lamps,  and  other  similar  conveniences, 
will  find  very  soon,  that  nearly  or  quite  half  the 
property,  in  that  neighborhood  is  now  the  Com- 
mon-Wealth. There  has  been  no  prejudice 
against  that  sort  of  wealth,  where  it  is  the 
most  convenient  form  of  property.  But  there 
is  other  property  which,  on  the  whole,  in  the 
experience  of  mankind,  it  has  proved  best  to 
reserve  for  separate  or  individual  holding. 
This  is  what  we  commonly  call  personal  prop- 
erty. Between  the  two  is  real  estate,  which 
is  held  by  the  individual  as  personal  property, 
but,  at  the  same  time,  is  held  under  the  emi- 
nent domain  of  society,  which  takes  it  when  it 
chooses  for  a  railway,  a  canal,  a  reservoir,  a 
school-house,    a    public    library,    or    any    other 


COMMUNISM.  257 

purpose  where,  on  the  whole,  its  use  is  needed 
for  or  by  the  Commonwealth. 

Of  course  it  is  true,  that,  as  civilization  goes 
forward,  new  experiments  may  be  tried,  and  new 
adjustments  may  be  found  necessary.  If  a  town- 
ship happened  to  hold  a  great  water-power,  it 
might  find  it  desirable  to  establish  an  electric 
plant,  for  light,  as  a  part  of  the  wealth  in  com- 
mon. Having  established  it  for  the  highways,  it 
would  be  absurd  not  to  permit  its  use  in  separate 
homes,  if  there  were  light  enough  to  be  used  so. 

In  just  the  same  way  most  of  our  states  have 
found  it  convenient  to  institute  state  asylums 
for  insanity,  for  the  blind,  the  deaf,  and  the 
dumb.  Large  cities  find  it  convenient  to  es- 
tablish hospitals  for  the  sick,  as  a  part  of  their 
wealth  in  common.  There  is  no  principle  which 
prevents  a  small  village  from  doing  the  same 
thing.  But,  in  a  small  village,  the  necessity 
does  not  press  in  the  same  way,  and  certain  in- 
conveniences prevent  such  an  arrangement.  In 
either  case,  however,  the  institution  is  founded, 
—  or  it  is  not  founded,  —  as  the  oarticular  exi- 
gency may  demand. 

Now  the  difficulty  in  all  the  grand  paper 
theories,  for  arranging  the  common  wealth,  has 
been  that  infallibly  there  has  been  a  vein  of 
patronage  or  condescension  visible  all  along  in 
the    arrangements    of    the    projector.       Robert 


258  HOW    THEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

Owen  really  thought  that  he  knew  how  to 
take  care  of  little  babies  better  than  their 
mothers  did.  So  he  took  the  babies  into  a 
common  nursery,  while  the  mothers  worked  at 
spinning-jennies  or  looms.  He  went  so  far  as 
to  indicate  in  advance  the  cut  of  the  dress 
which  children  were  to  wear  at  play.  St.  Si- 
mon, Fourier,  and  the  whole  tribe  take  just  the 
same  strain.  They  talk  of  "laborers,"  or  the 
"proletariat,"  or  the  "working-class," — just  as 
you  might  talk  of  the  mackerel  you  meant  to 
catch,  or  of  the  pounds  of  steam  which  were  to 
drive  your  piston.  What  follows  ?  Why,  as  soon 
as  Dale  Owen  carries  a  colony  to  New  Harmony, 
it  goes  to  pieces  on  a  rebellion  about  this  mat- 
ter of  dress.  Garfield  said  :  "  That  all  the  peo- 
ple are  much  wiser  than  any  one  of  the  people." 
The  people  know  what  they  want  much  better 
than  any  student  of  their  wants  knows.  They 
know  where  the  shoe  pinches,  and  what  hinge 
needs  oil. 

And  the  danger  and  the  failure  of  what  are 
called  socialistic  schemes,  —  or  communistic 
schemes,  social  unions,  phalansteries,  or  what- 
ever they  are  called,  —  spring  from  their  being 
imposed  from  above  below,  in  this  infatuation 
of  superiority.  It  all  belongs  to  the  middle 
ages,  and  to  feudalism,  where  a  baron  at  once 
protected  and  directed  his  inferiors. 


COMMUNISM.  259 

But  begin  at  the  other  end,  —  begin  on  the 
Christian  principle,  where  he  who  is  greatest 
among  you  is  your  servant,  and  is  only  great 
because  he  sei'ves,  —  and  you  will  not  have  any 
danger,  and  your  failure  will  be  easily  remedied. 
Let  the  people  associate  where  they  want  to 
and  need,  and  they  will  work  out  their  own 
successes.  From  their  experiments  have  come 
such  triumphs  as  mutual  insurance,  as  the  lim- 
ited liability  laws,  as  co-operative  trade,  co-oper- 
ative banking,  co-operative  fishing,  co-operative 
house-keeping.  If  they  make  a  mistake,  why, 
they  will  stop  soon  enough.  They  have  no 
passion  for  burning  their  fingers.  And  where 
they  succeed,  they  will  push  forward  in  the 
same  line,  and  they  will  find  plenty  of  imita- 
tors. 

It  ought  not  to  be  necessary  to  say  this  at 
any  length.  Briefly,  such  success  is  the  Chris- 
tian success,  freely  promised  to  those  who  seek 
first  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  mean  to  live 
righteously.  He  who  is  greatest  among  them 
is  their  servant.  And,  in  the  common  service, 
the  common  cause  succeeds. 


CHAPTER   XVI. 


CONCLUSION, 


IT  would  not  have  been  difficult  to  throw  this 
account  of  Hampton  into  a  more  systematic 
form  than  has  been  attempted.  But  it  is  desira- 
ble that  such  accounts  should  be  read,  as  well 
as  that  they  should  be  written.  And  I  have 
supposed  that,  by  describing  the  different  feat- 
ures of  the  enterprise,  with  some  reference  to 
the  different  points  of  view  of  the  persons  most 
engaged  in  them  it  would  be  easier  to  enlist 
readers. 

It  is  not,  however,  perhaps,  going  too  much 
into  the  philosophy  of  social  order,  if,  in  this 
closing  chapter,  the  writer  tries  to  state  a  few 
of  the  principles  on  which  the  success,  of  such 
an  enterprise  as  that  at  Hampton  is  based. 
First  of  all,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  America 
is,  and  always  was,  and  always  will  be,  a  demo- 
cratic country,  —  a  country  of  the  people,  gov- 
erned by  the  people,  for  the  people,  in  the 
people's  way.  It  really  made  no  difference 
whether  the  allegiance  of  this  country  were 
given  to  an  English  king  or   to   an   American 


CONCLUSION.  261 

constitution.  It  had  been  a  aemocratic  country 
from  the  very  beginning,  and  it  would  not  be  diffi- 
cult to  show  that  it  could  not  have  been  anything 
else.  By  this  is  meant,  that  the  People,  having 
of  necessity  to  take  a  good  deal  of  the  care  and 
arrangement  of  their  own  lives,  took  that  care 
so  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  it  was  always 
impossible  to  push  or  pull  them  by  any  wires, 
as  if  they  were  puppets,  to  be  directed  by  a 
superior  class.  The  People  had  made  their  own 
roads,  had  laid  out  their  own  towns,  had  estab- 
lished their  own  courts,  had  created  their  own 
local  governments  ;  and  a  People  which  had  done 
this  was  entirely  outside  of  any  possible  aris- 
tocratic or  despotic  governments.  This  is  sim- 
ply the  explanation  of  the  constitutions  of  the 
American  towns  and  cities. 

A  man  has  only  to  see  how  the  roads  are 
mended  in  a  country  community  in  America, 
to  understand  what  is  meant  by  the  popular 
direction  in  public  affairs.  It  is  no  engineer, 
sent  down  from  a  central  capital,  who  brings 
with  him  experts,  trained  to  road-building,  and 
what  the  French  would  call  "proletaries"  to 
execute  their  orders.  It  is,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  people  of  the  farms  who  are  themselves  to 
ride  over  the  roads,  who  come,  at  a  day  almost 
self-appointed,  with  their  oxen,  their  shovels, 
their   picks,    and   their   hoes,   and   execute   to- 


262  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

gether  certain  work  which  the  experience  of 
the  neighborhood  shows  necessary.  There  is 
probably  some  person  in  nominal  authority, 
who  is  called  a  "supervisor  of  the  roads,"  but 
this  man  acts,  and  knows  he  acts,  under  the 
appointment  of  the  very  people  whose  work  he 
is  supposed  to  direct,  and  the  correction  of  any 
faults  of  the  roads  might  fairly  be  said  to  be 
due  to  a  popular  rising  in  the  neighborhood  for 
that  purpose. 

Upon  people  so  trained  and  habituated  to 
using  their  own  personal  judgment  in  the  man- 
agement of  their  own  affairs,  there  was  super- 
imposed, by  the  changes  of  life  and  business, 
what  we  call  the  factory  system.  There  has 
never  been  any  trouble  in  the  factory  system  in 
America,  when  the  conditions  were  such  that 
the  instincts  of  the  national  popular  life  could 
be  maintained.  That  is  to  say,  if  the  people 
themselves  who  were  to  do  the  work,  felt  that 
they  had  some  discretion  in  the  matter,  and 
could  bring  some  of  their  own  intelligence  to 
bear  on  the  matter,  they  have  never  had  any 
difficulty  in  carrying  forward  the  manufacturing 
process  on  a  large  scale,  with  great  precision 
and  with  important  results.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  any  person  who  is  accustomed  to  the 
direction  of  "laborers,"  laboring  men,  or  "oper- 
atives," in  the  countries  of  Europe,  finds,  from 


CONCLUSION.  263 

the  very  beginning,  that  this  direction  from 
above  working  below,  autocratic  in  its  charac- 
ter, and  savoring  rather  of  Celtic  than  of  Teu- 
tonic life,  is  met  with  obstacles  at  every  step. 

Whenever  we  hear  of  a  difficulty  in  a  mill,  or 
a  misunderstanding  between  employers  and  em- 
ployed, it  may  be  said,  almost  with  certainty, 
that  the  parties  on  the  one  side  or  the  other 
have  deviated,  perhaps  of  necessity,  from  the 
original  idea,  which  is,  at  bottom,  the  idea  of 
mutual  help  or  co-operation. 

It  has  been  intimated  in  these  pages  more 
than  once  that  wherever  the  American  idea  is 
permitted  to  assert  itself  the  results  are  simple 
and  satisfactory,  as  in  the  well-known  instance 
of  the  Nantucket  whale-fishery,  and  the  fisheries 
for  mackerel  and  cod  carried  on  from  both  the 
large  capes  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  It  would 
even  be  fair  to  take  the  great  military  achieve- 
ments of  the  volunteer  armies  of  the  United 
States  as  an  illustration  of  what  is  gained  when 
the  national  principle  is  permitted  to  assert  it- 
self. If,  after  one  of  the  great  conscriptions  of 
Europe,  it  were  proposed  that  the  recruits 
should  hold  an  election  to  choose  their  captains 
and  lieutenants,  it  may  almost  be  said  that 
every  commanding  officer  now  on  the  continent 
of  Europe  would  commit  liari-kari,  or  seek  a 
happy  release  in  the  face  of  a  proposal  which 


264  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

he  would  consider  as,  in  itself,  so  fatal  to  all 
energy  and  authority.  But  when  the  United 
States  had  occasion  to  call,  not  for  recruits,  but 
for  volunteers,  and  to  bring  those  volunteers 
into  the  field,  the  states  which  were  in  the 
habit  of  intrusting  to  their  soldiers  the  election 
of  their  own  lieutenants  and  captains  found  no 
occasion  to  change  their  habit ;  and  the  disci- 
pline of  that  army  was  maintained  with  pre- 
cisely the  same  precision  that  belongs  to  what 
we  call  the  regular  army  of  the  United  States, 
in  which  no  such  privilege  was  ever  sought  for 
or  expected.  That  is  to  say,  the  people  of  the 
United  States  understand  perfectly  well  that 
there  must  be  order,  there  must  be  command, 
there  must  be  authority.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  people  of  the  United  States,  from 
the  very  nature  of  their  being,  from  the  cir- 
cumstances which  called  them  into  existence, 
understand  that  they  are  the  real  fountain  of 
authority,  order,  and  command,  and  they  like  to 
be  consulted  before  authority  is  asserted. 

All  this,  it  may  be  said,  is  merely  theoretical. 
Possibly  it  is  so ;  but  the  theory  involved  is 
based  upon  national  habits  which  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  pass  by  without  consideration.  Now,  the 
problem  before  men  who  would  organize  indus- 
try on  a  large  scale,  for  any  specific  purpose, 
involves,  first  of  all,  the  question  how  the  organ- 


CONCLUSION.  265 

ization  to  be  made  shall  move  easily  and  without 
friction.  How  shall  you  enlist  the  good-will  of 
those  who  must  work  together  in  this  system  ? 
This  is  really  the  first  question.  The  first  ques- 
tion is  not  how  shall  you  secure  the  largest 
market,  or  how  shall  you  make  the  most  money. 
If  the  institution  is  to  be  a  permanent  institu- 
tion, the  question  is.  How  are  you  to  secure  the 
good-will  of  all  hands  engaged  ? 

It  may  be  granted  that  the  visible  result  does 
not  very  much  differ,  though  it  has  been  pro- 
duced in  half  a  dozen  different  ways.  A  com- 
pany, for  instance,  whose  troops  or  whose 
officers  have  been  commissioned  by  a  higher 
authority,  would  not  differ  in  the  aspect  of  a 
parade  from  a  company  of  volunteer  troops 
whose  officers  have  been,  nominally  at  least, 
chosen  by  the  privates.  But  if,  in  one  of  these 
two  cases,  there  were  harmony  and  good  feeling 
and  alacrity  among  the  men,  and  in  the  other 
case  you  found  nothing  better,  perhaps,  than 
indifference,  or  at  least  willingness  to  obey, 
there  would  be  a  difference  in  the  quality  of 
the  thing  done,  which  would  give  the  preference 
to  one  system  or  the  other. 

It  is  certainly  true  that  in  industries  not  re- 
quiring the  co-operation  of  very  large  numbers 
of  persons,  it  is  easy  to  obtain  that  sympathy 
and    good-will   of   all    hands  which   is    desired, 


266  HOW    TIIKV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

wilhout  any  very  formal  effort  for  the  purpose. 
Most  agricultural  industries  can  be  carried  on 
with  that  good-natured  fellow-feeling  which  has 
been  described  as  belonging  to  the  race,  —  the 
willingness,  on  the  one  hand,  to  lend  a  hand, 
with  the  expectation,  on  the  other  hand,  of  re- 
spect and  confidence.  The  book  in  the  reader's 
hand  is  an  effort  to  show  that  the  same  sympa- 
thy, niutual  regard,  and  mutual  help  may  be 
obtained  in  the  largest  processes  of  manufac- 
turing, as  it  is  attained  on  board  of  a  fishing- 
smack  or  a  whaling-ship,  or  in  the  work  of  a 
large  farm. 

The  principle  of  co-operation  is  so  essential 
to  all  Christian  civilization,  and  has  asserted 
itself  with  such  signal  success  in  many  of  the 
walks  of  industry,  that  the  word  is  now  used, 
particularly  by  careless  people,  as  if  it  were  a 
talisman.  The  novelist,  who  has  used  all  the 
pages  of  his  book  for  the  purpose  of  showing 
how  terrible  is  the  conflict  between  the  employ- 
ers and  the  employed,  waves  his  wand  at  the 
end  with  the  word  "co-operation,"  and  all  bad 
dragons  are  expected  to  sink  into  the  abyss,  and 
good  angels  to  appear  in  their  places.  But  tt  is 
perfectly  well  known  that  the  experiments  of 
co-operative  industry  on  a  large  scale  have  not 
succeeded  so  far  as  to  induce  their  repetition  on 
a  larger  scale.     Until  this  measure  of  success 


CONCLUSION.  267 

has  been  attained,  it  is  necessary  to  study  the 
experiments  which  have  been  made,  to  see  in 
what  is  the  point  of  faikire. 

As  the  reader  knows,  the  writer  believes  that 
the  failure  is  due  to  the  neglect  of  skilful  Man- 
agement. In  most  co-operative  enterprises  it 
is  taken  for  granted  that  if  you  have  a  great 
body  of  privates  any  fool  can  command  them. 
Such  is  apt  to  be  the  feeling  of  insurgents  when 
they  rise  to  a  great  but  new  duty.  No  fallacy 
is  more  dangerous,  and  no  statement  is  more 
false.  The  success  of  a  business  enterprise  de- 
pends entirely  upon  the  skill  with  which  it  is 
Managed,  and  upon  the  faithfulness  and  con- 
stancy and  courage  of  its  managers.  Unless 
the  necessity  for  such  gifts  is  recognized  at  the 
very  outset,  unless  they  are  rated  where  they 
belong,  as  among  the  rare  gifts  of  men,  without 
which  success  is  impossible,  the  enterprise  fails. 
It  fails  just  as  certainly  as  it  would  fail  if  it 
had  no  capital,  or  as  it  would  fail  if  the  work- 
people all  deserted  it.  To  hold  in  proper  re- 
spect those  who  mediate  between  the  capitalist 
and  the  workmen,  to  give  to  them  authority, 
absolute  in  its  place  and  sufficient  for  every 
purpose, — this  is  the  first  necessity  in  such  en- 
terprises. But  it  is  a  necessity  which  has  con- 
stantly been  neglected,- — ^one  might  say,  has 
been  almost  always  neglected,  in  the  plans  for 


268  HOW    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

co-operative  industry.  There  is  a  general  im- 
pression that  the  managers  must  be  kept  under ; 
must  be  kept  in  a  subordinate  position.  It  is 
thought  that  they  have  gained  too  much  in  the 
past,  and  that,  for  the  future,  they  must  be 
paying  back  the  debt  which  has  been  contracted 
by  their  class.  And  so  the  enterprise,  involving 
vigorous  and  loyal  effort  on  the  part  of  the 
workingmen,  fails,  as  the  army  would  fail  which 
was  not  led  by  a  skilful  and  experienced  general. 
The  distinctive  feature,  then,  in  the  Hampton 
enterprise,  as  an  enterprise  of  co-operation,  is 
that  the  Management  is  recognized  as  one  of 
the  three  important  factors  in  the  business. 
We  consider  it  important  that  the  elements  of 
success  should  be  thus  classified.  The  general 
effort  in  the  past  has  been  to  give  to  Capital 
the  place  of  Management,  and  to  place  the 
workman  in  subordination  to  the  union  thus 
formed.  The  dreams  of  the  future  most  preva- 
lent have  generally  given  to  the  workmen  the 
Management,  and  made  Capital  subordinate  to 
the  union  thus  formed.  The  argument  of  this 
book  is  directed  to  show  that  Capital  has  its 
place,  that  Management  has  its  place,  and  that 
Work  has  its  place.  We  believe  it  will  be  con- 
venient to  divide  about  equally  the  profits  of 
any  enterprise  between  those  who  represent 
these  three  necessary  departments  of  every  en- 


CONCLUSION.  269 

terprise.  We  believe  that  it  is  as  dangerous  to 
combine  the  one  of  these  departments  with  the 
other  as  it  is  in  civil  government  to  combine 
the  legislative  function  with  the  judicial  func- 
tion, or  the  judicial  function  with  that  of  the 
executive.  We  believe  that  the  general  good 
attained  will  be  in  proportion  as  the  three  func- 
tions are  kept  visibly  distinct  before  all  men's 
eyes. 

It  may  very  well  happen  that  the  workingman 
who  is  succeeding  in  life  does  not  choose  to  con- 
tinue the  investment  of  his  property  in  the  sav- 
ings bank,  but  buys  into  the  stock  of  the  com- 
pany which  employs  him.  So  true  is  it  that 
"corporation  is  co-operation."  But  no  such  dis- 
position of  a  man's  property  is  necessary  in  the 
Hampton  system,  as  it  has  been  described  in 
these  pages ;  and  it  has  been  more  convenient,  for 
tracing  the  principle  involved,  to  keep  the  repre- 
sentatives of  Capital,  Management,  and  Industry 
separate  from  each  other.  The  author  has  given 
to  this  book  as  a  second  title,  "  Christianity  ap- 
plied to  Manufacture."  By  this  he  means  to  inti- 
mate that  the  plans  of  the  future  for  large  man- 
ufacturing will  be  akin  to  the  American  plan  for 
government.  They  will  involve,  as  an  essential 
element,  the  ability  of  the  people  to  direct  their 
own  amusements,  their  own  education,  their  own 
charities,  —  in  a  word,  their  own  social  life.    As  a 


270  now    TIIKY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

part  of  this  direction,  they  will  have  their  own 
personal  interest,  as  they  now  do,  indeed,  in  the 
success  of  the  industries  which  employ  them 
from  day  to  day.  It  was  very  natural  that  a 
few  men  of  property  in  large  towns  should  con- 
ceive the  idea  of  insuring  the  ships,  the  houses, 
or  the  lives  of  their  persons.  But,  in  the  regu- 
lar growth  of  an  American  system,  this  over- 
sight of  insurance  passes  from  the  hands  of  the 
few  into  the  hands  of  the  many,  and,  in  the  long 
run,  under  the  system  of  mutual  insurance,  the 
same  person  is  the  insurer  and  the  insured.  It 
is  by  a  movement  precisely  parallel,  as  the  au- 
thor conceives,  that  the  manufacturing  of  Amer- 
ica has  developed  on  democratic  lines.  Exactly 
as  insurance  began  when  a  few  rich  men  met  in 
a  counting-house  and  planned  an  insurance  com- 
pany, the  large  manufactures  began  when  a  few 
rich  men  met  and  planned  a  cotton  factory  or  a 
woollen  mill.  But,  by  a  growth  exactly  anala- 
gous  to  the  growth  of  mutual  insurance,  it  will 
probably  prove  that  the  persons  who  have  in 
hand  the  raw  materials  and  work  them  up  will 
be  counted  in,  not  simply  as  passive,  but  among 
the  interested  allies  in  the  manufacture  to  which 
they  lend  themselves.  There  will  result  a  sym- 
pathy and  common  force  which  is  gained  when 
a  body  of  people  say,  "  We  are  going  to  do  this," 
or  "We  are  going  to  do  that,"  and  which  cannot 


CONCLUSION.  271 

exist  when  they  say,  "  He  proposes  this,"  or 
"He  proposes  that."  It  will  be  for  the  next 
generation  to  indicate  the  steps  by  which  this 
enlargement  of  human  power  will  be  attained. 
Of  those  steps  the  watchword  is  "Together." 

One  has  not  far  to  go  in  the  history  of  Amer- 
ica to  find  the  illustrations  of  the  principle  in- 
volved in  every  stage  of  our  social  history.  It 
would  be  fair  to  say  that,  from  Maine  to  Florida, 
from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  there  is  not  a 
community,  large  or  small,  which  has  been  es- 
tablished, in  its  present  condition  at  the  fiat  of 
a  superior  power.  The  principle  of  successful 
republican  administration  has  been,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  movement  of  the  people,  and  the  par- 
ticipation of  the  people.  Louis  XIV.  could  give 
the  orders  for  the  foundation  of  the  city  of 
Orleans.  But,  though  it  held  the  comm.and  of 
the  commerce  of  the  Mississippi  Riv^er,  the  lit- 
tle port,  created  to  order,  was  an  insignificant 
hamlet,  until,  in  a  new  dynasty,  the  People  who 
wanted  to  use  the  advantages  of  that  position 
swept  in  upon  it,  and  gave  to  it  a  new  birth. 
The  Middle  states  can  show  hundreds  of  the 
ruins  of  fanciful  colonies,  established  from  above, 
by  this  or  that  schemer  who  meant  —  as  Robert 
Owen  did,  as  St.  Simon  did  —  to  bring  in  a  new 
kingdom.  But  such  endeavors  have  regularly 
failed.      The   unsuccessful   colonies   established 


2/2  now    THEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

before  the  time  of  Jamestown  were  similar  fail- 
ures. The  colony  of  Virginia  almost  failed,  for 
a  like  reason,  and  it  was  not  until  a  popular  ele- 
ment was  introduced  in  her  affairs  that  a  favor- 
able era  of  prosperity  set  in.  Exactly  the  same 
is  true  of  the  early  history  of  the  Carolinas. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  states  in  which  emi- 
gration is  as  free  as  air,  irresistibly,  from  the 
law  of  man's  nature,  one  might  say,  prospered. 
A  dozen  men,  with  their  families,  be  it  observed, 
found  themselves  neighbors  of  each  other  on 
the  same  township  or  grant,  or,  if  they  preceded 
any  survey,  in  the  same  valley.  Infallibly  they 
consulted  together  about  building  the  necessary 
roads  and  bridges.  Roads  and  bridges  may  be 
said  to  be  the  first  necessity  of  organized  so- 
ciety. For  defence  against  savages,  perhaps 
for  carrying  the  mail,  and,  before  long,  for  com- 
mon worship,  for  common  education,  these  men 
must  meet  together.  Every  one  is  interested. 
Every  one  expresses  his  interest.  Every  one 
offers  his  plan.  If  a  plan  is  tried  and  fails,  the 
experiment  has  been  on  so  small  a  scale  that  no 
one  suffers  greatly.  If  it  is  tried  and  succeeds, 
every  little  community  in  the  neighborhood  tries 
the  experiment  again,  and  it  works  its  way  over 
the  land. 

It  is  in  this  freedom  by  which  every  man  acts, 
and  is  expected  to  act  in  social  affairs,  that  the 


CONCLUSION.  273 

mystery  and  majesty  of  self-government  consist. 
The  writers  of  Europe  generally  misapprehend 
self-government,  and  the  European  advisers  of 
America  misapprehend  it.  Self-government  does 
not  consist  in  the  election,  by  any  "plebiscite" 
or  other  public  act,  of  the  magistrate  or  emperor 
who  is  to  govern  the  people.  Self-government 
does  not  appear  till  the  people  govern  them- 
selves. In  homes,  in  churches,  in  the  meetings 
of  school  districts  or  of  townships,  in  the  affairs 
of  insurance  companies  or  railways,  in  lodges, 
chapters,  commandaries,  and  posts  of  charitable 
societies,  the  people  which  is  used  to  self-gov- 
ernment carries  out  its  methods  of  self-govern- 
ment. Among  the  methods,  one  is  the  choice 
of  a  chief  magistrate,  to  attend  to  certain 
national  affairs,  to  which  kings  attend  in  other 
nations.  But  this  man  is  not  the  ruler  of  the 
nation  which  chooses  him  ;  on  the  other  hand, 
he  is  ruled  by  the  nation. 


Any  enterprise  which  is  to  succeed  in  Amer- 
ica recognizes  as  a  very  important  element  for 
success  this  aptness  of  the  people  for  self-gov- 
ernment and  the  manifold  triumphs  which  have 
sprung  from  it.  The  successful  projector  leaves 
every  agent,  as  far  as  possible,  to  work  with  his 
own  tools,  in  his  own  way,  to  bring  his  own  con- 


2/4         1"^^^'  Tiii'v  livp:d  in  hampton. 

tribution  to  the  common  weal,  and  is  glad  to 
accept  the  intelligent  suggestion  and  co-opera- 
tion of  all  concerned.  He  is  glad  to  have  public 
o})inion  and  the  public  sentiment  on  his  side. 
He  does  not  resent  advice  from  one  of  his 
hands.  He  is  glad  if  any  one  of  them  speaks 
of  "our  success,  our  plans,  our  improvement." 

One  of  the  most  intelligent  English  essayists 
on  the  modern  inventions  in  mechanical  art  says 
distinctly  that  to  this  ready  co-operation  of  the 
workmen  in  the  American  shops  is  due,  in  large 
measure,  the  success  of  American  novelties  in 
machinery.  He  says  that  a  new  model  intro- 
duced in  an  American  shop  challenges  the  inter- 
est of  everybody.  Everybody  is  ready  to  make  a 
suggestion.  Everybody  wants  it  to  succeed.  The 
men  set  to  work  upon  it,  cherish  it  as  if  it  were 
their  own.  It  has  the  best  chance  from  the 
beginning.  The  contrast  which  he  draws,  from 
the  cool  and  indifferent  reception  of  a  new  in- 
vention in  an  English  shop,  need  not  be  quoted 
here.  It  is  not  flattering.  At  bottom  the  com- 
mon feeling  of  mutual  help,  trained  by  all  true 
American  institutions,  is  the  origin  of  the  cordial 
welcome  thus  given  to  the  new  invention. 

Men  like  to  work  together.  They  have  a  com- 
mon share,  of  course,  in  the  common  weal,  and 
they  are  glad  to  have  it  recognized. 

Now   in   the  village  of    Hampton   this  com- 


CONCLUSION.  275 

mon  force  of  the  "together"  was  recognized, 
not  simply  in  political  government,  but,  as  the 
reader  has  seen,  in  all  their  affairs.  It  was  not 
necessary  to  import  such  an  arrangement,  or  to 
ask  any  legislator  to  devise  it  for  them.  The 
people  drifted  into  the  plan 

"From  native  impulse,  elemental  force." 
Thus,  a  detail  as  much  parted  from  their 
political  system  as  was  the  management  of 
their  amusements,  took  care  of  itself,  as  one 
is  tempted  to  say,  because  it  was  every  man's 
affair.  It  is  not  quite  just  to  say  that  no  one 
takes  care  of  that  which  every  one  should  care 
for.  It  may  be  that  selfish  men  hold  back,  it 
often  is  so.  But  let  it  be  proudly  recognized, 
that  the  responsibility  of  any  enterprise  is  with 
the  community  and  not  with  the  individual,  and, 
as  in  the  case  of  Dick  Sheridan's  district  meet- 
ing, which  has  been  described,  the  community 
can  be  made  to  understand  its  responsibility. 
When  it  is  made  to  understand  it  and  to  accept 
it,  it  will  go  forward  much  more  steadily  than 
when  it  is  instructed  from  above  or  commanded 
from  above.  So  it  proved  in  the  matter  of 
amusements.  This  community  provided  for 
them  lavishly,  while  it  provided  for  them  in- 
telligently. It  did  so  because  the  leaders  of 
opinion  trusted  the  people  with  a  matter  wliich 
specially    concerned    the    people.      The   people, 


276  HOW    TIIEV    LIVKD    IX    HAMPTON. 

in  consequence,  secured  amusements  which 
amused,  and  entertainments  which  entertained. 
At  the  same  time,  these  were  amusements  and 
entertainments  which  did  not  degrade  or  con- 
taminate their  children. 

The  same  thing  is  to  be  said  of  the  public 
library.  One  finds,  not  infrequently,  a  large 
foundation  for  a  public  library,  in  which  the 
annual  income  is  carefully,  even  wisely,  ex- 
pended, but  where  the  real  people  of  the  place, 
for  whom  such  costly  provision  is  made,  do  not 
avail  themselves  of  the  books  which  are  at  their 
hands.  You  shall  find  that  in  one  town  a  free 
library  is  diligently  and  largely  used,  and,  in 
another  town,  that  a  better  library  is  hardly 
used  at  all.  You  may  go  into  a  large  and  ele- 
gant reading-room  of  a  winter  evening,  to  find 
perhaps  one  boy,  for  whom  all  this  lavish  prep- 
aration has  been  made.  The  other  boys  and  the 
girls,  the  men  and  the  women,  have  not  accepted 
the  "silent  friends"  who  are  waiting  for  them. 
The  books  stand  not  read  upon  the  shelves. 

The  people  of  Hampton  secured  themselves 
from  such  mortification,  because  they  themselves 
conducted,  as  they  had  organized,  their  library. 
They  knew  what  they  wanted,  and  they  bought 
it.  It  was  well  for  them,  perhaps,  that  they  had 
not  too  large  a  fund  for  the  purchase  of  books. 
They  counted  the  dollars  which  they  spent,  and 


CONCLUSION.  277 

they  spent  them  well.  But  nothing  was  more 
clear  than  that  the  hbrary  did  not  suffer  because 
it  depended  upon  the  public  generosity.  There 
was  nothing,  I  was  told,  for  which  money  was 
voted  so  generously  in  the  annual  meeting. 
"  After  they  once  tasted  blood,"  Mr,  Spinner 
said  to  me,  "  they  were  always  ready  to  vote  the 
appropriations." 

The  readjustment  of  the  savings  bank,  which 
has  been  described,  was  simply  the  application 
of  the  same  habit.  It  came  from  the  magic  of 
"together."  If  there  is  mutual  insurance,  why 
not  mutual  banking  .■•  If  a  poor  man  can  place 
money  on  deposit,  why  may  he  not  draw  it,  if  he 
have  good  indorsers  .-*  There  is  no  greater  mis- 
take than  that  which  supposes  that,  because  a 
man  has  but  little,  he  will  be  careless  about 
investment.  He  is  more  careful  than  the  man 
of  millions.  And  the  necessity  of  keeping  well 
what  they  had  earned  hardly,  made  the  Hampton 
weavers  very  cautious  before  they  granted  their 
indorsements. 


It  has  been  intimated  already,  more  than  once, 
that  the  success  of  their  movement,  in  one  detail 
or  another,  sprang  from  their  willingness  to  sub- 
mit to  Christian  requisitions,  while  they  claimed 
and  expected  the  advantages  promised  to  tiie 


2/8  HOW    TIIEY    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

living"  cliildrcn  of  the  living  God.  They  were 
willing  to  do  their  share  in  working  out  their 
own  -salvation,  and  they  knew  that  while  they 
worked,  God  worked  with  them.  They  were 
not  expecting  the  coming  of  any  kingdom  for 
which  they  had  not  made  some  sacrifice  them- 
selves. And  it  was  because  they  trusted  the 
God  to  whom  they  prayed,  that  they  believed 
that  the  Christian  law  of  love  would  be  sufficient 
for  their  enterprise. 

These  sketches  of  the  prosperity  which  fol- 
lows on  an  attempt  to  carry  out  Christian  law 
in  Christian  love,  are  dedicated  to  any  man  and 
woman  who  seek  in  the  Gospel  the  direction 
for  daily  life.  It  is  not  pretended  that  such 
plans  will  recommend  themselves  to  individuals 
who  want  to  live  alone,  every  man  for  himself, 
or  who  seek  only  the  separate  indulgences  of 
such  lonely  life.  For  such  men  it  may  be  freely 
granted  that  the  cold-blooded  maxims  of  the 
economists  are  the  only  maxims.  But  the  suc- 
cess of  these  maxims  in  the  social  history  of  the 
world  has  not  been  so  decided  that  the}'  should 
tempt  any  one  to  accept  them  as  a  rule  of  life. 

Such  plans  for  the  good  of  all,  as  those 
attempted  at  Hampton,  could  not  have  been 
carried  out  in  any  heathen  civilization.  They 
would  have  failed  in  ancient  Rome ;  they  would 
have  failed  in  Athens ;  they  would  have  failed 


CONCLUSION.  279 

in  ancient  Jerusalem.  They  belong  only  in  the 
social  system  founded  by  the  Saviour  of  man- 
kind, among  men  and  women  who  hope  to'live 
in  His  Spirit  and  by  His  Law. 

Perhaps  this  has  been  said  often  enough,  as 
the  different  chapters  have  described  different 
details.  The  men  and  women  who  embark  on 
such  plans  must  understand  in  their  personal 
religious  experience,  that  "  if  one  member  suffer 
all  the  members  suffer  with  it,"  and  that  if 
one  member  is  to  rejoice  all  the  members  will 
rejoice  with  it.  They  will  remember  that  the 
Saviour,  in  His  promises  for  the  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  does  not  address  such  prom- 
ises to  any  one  lonely  follower.  He  takes  it 
for  granted,  rather,  that  such  lonely  follower 
breathes  the  common  life  of  the  church,  and 
that  its  life-blood  flows  in  his  veins.  It  is  to 
the  "little  flock"  that  he  promises  the  King- 
dom. And  to  the  flock,  "if  j^  seek  the  King- 
dom of  God,"  He  promises  the  temporal  success 
which  belongs  with  the  Kingdom,  and  is  the 
reward  of  such  endeavor.  It  is  nowhere  prom- 
ised to  the  Buddhist,  satisfied  with  self-inspec- 
tion ;  it  is  nowhere  promised  to  the  hermit, 
parting  himself  from  men.  It  is  promised  to 
those  who  arc  sons  and  daughters  of  God, 
united  in  one  Spirit,  who  pray  with  one  prayer 
to  the  Father. 


280  lunv    TIIEV    LIVED    IN    HAMPTON. 

By  a  movement  perfectly  steady  and  assured, 
the  Christian  cliurch  has  moved  forward  on  the 
lines  thus  indicated. 

It  abolished  human  slavery,  —  first  in  the 
Roman  luupirc,  and  eventually  in  the  Christian 
world. 

It  raised  the  condition  of  woman,  —  first  to 
the  condition  she  had  enjoyed  in  the  Holy 
Land,  eventually  to  a  grade  where  she  is  the 
recognized  equal  of  man. 

The  feudal  system,  under  Christian  lead,  took 
the  place  of  the  social  tyranny  of  Rome,  and, 
in  its  turn,  gave  way  to  the  social  order  which 
gives  every  man  and  woman  equal  rights  before 
the  law. 

As  it  advances,  the  Christian  Spirit  provides 
for  the  humblest  and  weakest  child  of  God  the 
same  privileges  for  health,  for  education,  for 
development,  as  are  provided  for  the  richest. 

In  government,  as  the  Spirit  of  Christ  and 
His  Law  take  more  possession  of  men,  the  Peo- 
ple rules  itself,  —  it  is  no  longer  under  the  direc- 
tion of  any  man  or  any  class.  The  Saviour's 
word  is  fulfilled,  and  "  he  who  is  greatest  among 
you  is  your  servant."  The  word  "democracy" 
means  simply  the  application  of  Christianity  in 
politics. 

It  is  for  the  next  century  and  the  closing 
years  of  this  to  show  how  these  eternal  princi- 


CONCLUSION.  281 

pies  of  a  divine  life  are  to  inspire  the  great 
commercial  movements  of  modern  time.  In 
manufacture,  in  all  the  applications  of  science 
for  the  comfort  of  mankind,  and  in  that  trade 
in  which  nation  exchanges  products  against 
nation  and  man  against  man,  the  divine  law  is 
to  reign.  Such  social  arrangements  also  are 
to  come  into  God's  Kingdom.  Men  will  not  be 
content  to  live  every  man  for  himself,  nor  to 
die  every  man  for  himself.  In  work,  in  art, 
in  study,  in  trade,  —  in  all  life,  indeed,  —  the 
children  of  God,  called  by  a  Saviour's  voice, 
will  wish  to  live  in  the  common  cause.  They 
will  live  for  the  common  wealth,  —  this  is  the 
modern  phrase.  They  will  bear  each  other's 
burdens,  —  this  is  the  phrase  of  Paul.  They 
will  live  in  the  life  of  Love.  And  it  will  prove 
true,  as  it  was  promised,  that  all  things  are 
added  to  the  community  which  thus  seeks  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  His  Righteousness. 


THE   END. 


^■<^> 


lego 


*^'nia,  Saji  Dir"      ^ 


DATE 


DUE 


C^^^^^ 


'.^f^:^^-.- 


Ubr. 


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